On the Woodway
by BigFatNo
Summary: A gruesome murder at Hogwarts disturbs the peaceful summer, and Head Auror Harry Potter struggles with the dark secret he carries with him. Kingsley Shacklebolt's Ministry hangs by a thread as old foes once again seek to reclaim power. Ancient and eternal forces are changing the world once more, and Harry is caught in the midst of the storm. #2 of The Elder Tales, #3 is in-progress
1. Prologue

**Author's note:** Hello, everyone. It's been almost a year, but here it is: the sequel to my previous story: Driving Miss Weasley. If you haven't read that yet: what are you waiting for?

This story is more than twice as long as the prequel, and it's divided over thirteen chapters (and a prologue). It will be uploaded over the course of the coming month (or two). As always, don't hesitate to leave a review and/or share some points of critique!

I would like to thank my beta readers: Moon_Potato and Lawyer. They have worked their butts off over the past months to proofread, give me tips and critique, and point me into the right direction time and time again. Special thanks also to Vlaai, Freshenstein (aka. Squirelly Dan) and FloreatCastellum for proofreading! And, lastly, thank you to all my other friends at the Reddit HPFanfiction Discord. I've had their full support and help from start to finish. You guys are the best. Now, without further ado:

.

* * *

Julian Mercier rubbed his weary eyes as he counted the measly coin he'd earned that day. It was barely enough to buy himself some potatoes and some bread. Maybe some duck if he was lucky.

It wasn't that his print shop on Market Street wasn't profitable. The problem was that all of his money had to be spent on the appearance of his store, lest the filth, wear, and perpetually returning woodworm scare his customers away. The folk he welcomed here were picky gentlemen and nobles, and every hate-filled stereotype that his late mother had told him about when he was a young boy, was true. Just this morning, he'd had to grit his teeth and smile politely as a young nobleman complained to him that "you middling sort are lacking in court grace, not altogether polite, overfamiliar, and insufficiently respectful."

And at the end of the day, he would travel to the other end of the street to buy a sorry excuse for a meal, and then return home to cook it. Before he went to sleep, he would read the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, in the hope that his dreams would be spent on far-away islands, where justice still reigned and God still listened to His people. That was the only respite he would get from his life as a print seller in eighteenth-century Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

At least he had mates with whom he could share this existence, he thought as he closed the thick, cotton blinds. He used to enjoy sharing a drink with them at the tavern after shop hours, but lately he couldn't bring himself to smile as sincerely and laugh as raucously as he used to. Not while he had to hide this terrible secret from them.

He took the Elder Wand from the inner pocket of his shabby waistcoat and discreetly cast a Locking Charm on the shop entrance as he stepped out into the summer night on Market Street.

This cursed wand would be the death of him. That he knew for sure. Ever since that fateful day when it had come into his possession - or perhaps, the other way around - peculiar things had started happening to him. It had started rather innocently. Maybe the first misfortune was the woodworm infestation. Or maybe it was the first of many nightmares, where dark creatures crept into his bedroom and dragged him to Hell. Whatever it was, he should never have gone poaching with Thomas that day.

 _Lord, forgive me_ , he thought. It had become his mantra.

As always, he was the last customer of the day at Francis' General Store, and the owner, Francis Willoway, welcomed him with a pitying smile.

"Come in, friend," the broad, greying man said. "Managed to get through another day, then?"

"We still have a couple of hours," Julian said. "D'you have any ducks left?"

"No, I'm afraid I sold them all," Francis replied, compassion shining in his watery blue eyes. "You should come in earlier some time, you know."

"You know I can't."

He wanted to cry, but he held it in. Just when he wanted to ask the day's price for potatoes, Francis beckoned to him before disappearing into the room behind the shop.

Julian entered the small, gloomy chamber with some trepidation. Francis stood bent over in a small pantry, and then he turned around and presented him a strangely shaped package.

"Here you are, friend," he said.

Julian took it, still unable to identify what the man had wrapped in the woven pouch. He raised his eyebrows quizzically.

"It's venison," Francis said enthusiastically. "Brian caught it yesterday on Lord Kinnaird's estate. Said it was the biggest buck he'd ever seen!"

Julian's breath hitched in his throat.

"Thank you, my friend," he croaked, squeezing the shopkeeper's shoulder.

"We all deserve a good meal," he replied. "Now go, quickly, before someone outside notices us."

Julian hurried home in the sultry summer air, barely able to keep his composure. Francis would, of course, think that he was emotional because of the gift. And he really was moved by the man's generosity. But Francis didn't know what had happened the last time Julian had gone poaching.

Back in his home, he watched as the deer meat slowly roasted over the fire. He was starving, but he willed himself to wait until the meat was properly grilled. He couldn't afford to get sick by eating it undercooked.

His famished mind began to wander again. The sight of the venison took him back to that day when he and Thomas had ventured onto Lord Kinnaird's land. It had been a hard winter, and to top it off, a sudden storm had sunk a ship that was due to arrive from Rotterdam, containing Dutch paintings that were supposed to be delivered to him. Being a merchant was a game of high risks, and that was when Julian had found out just how harsh the trade could be.

Desperate for food and money, he'd gone to Thomas for help. The old smith had still owed him some favours, so he agreed to accompany him on a hunt for meat and fur.

It didn't go well. The estate was nothing like the greenwood of old, where merry men lived like the old Robin Hood of England. Once, legends told, England was covered in woods where animals were abundant, and berries, fruit, and nuts grew wherever the eye could see. Such were its riches that every man, lord and peasant, thane and churl, co-existed in moderation and freedom.

But then the Normans had come, and with them, despotic new laws. Woods were turned into hunting grounds for the rich, and peasants were made into servants. Even then, Julian thought, that was better than the sparse world he lived in now. The few forests that remained, preserved to fill the nobility's need for hunting, were wiped from the earth for the glory of the Empire and its immense fleet.

The forest where Julian and Thomas had hunted was desolate, silent, and empty. By noon, they had caught one rabbit, and by the time they had set up camp for dinner, they had only added an emaciated grouse to their spoils. And as they sat there around their small campfire, cooking the bird and drinking their desperation away, Thomas had become talkative...

Julian shook his head to snap out of the memory. He glanced at the meat and deemed it ready to eat. He carefully removed it from the skewer, levitated it onto a pewter plate, and finally began to eat.

After finishing the considerable chunk of meat, his eyes started to droop. He washed up with a quick spell and then collapsed on his cot in the corner of the small room. Sleep came easy, for once, now that his stomach was full. But with a dreaded certainty he found himself in that forest, once again forced to relive that terrible night.

* * *

"I found this odd branch on the ground this afternoon," Thomas said, holding up a peculiarly-shaped stick as they sat around the campfire. Julian's heart started beating faster when he recognised it as a wand. "Look how strange it is, do you see those little nubs on it?"

"Yeah," Julian said with a hollow voice. He had heard stories about a wand shaped like this. "Is that elder wood?"

"Yeah, it is. Anyway, I broke it and was about to toss it, but then I saw something that looked like a hair inside it. And then I swear it mended itself," Thomas continued.

"Can I see it?" Julian asked, holding his hand out towards it. There was no doubt. It was made of elder wood, and what Thomas had seen was a Thestral hair. There was only one wand like that. This was the Elder Wand, and Thomas, the poor Muggle, had no idea about it.

"No, I don't think so, young man," Thomas laughed, putting the wand back in his pocket. "A magical stick; this is gonna bring in a good sum. Tell you what, though, I'll give you twenty percent of what I get for this. I wouldn't have found it without you, after all."

"Alright," Julian heard himself say.

But he couldn't take his mind off the wand as they ate the bird and then crawled into their sleeping bags. He remembered the stories his mother used to tell him, and the Tale of the Three Brothers used to be his favourite. He knew, like every other witch and wizard in the country, how much power the Deathly Hallows possessed.

Julian lay awake, staring into the embers of the fire. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't shake his thoughts from the Elder Wand. A strange obsession had taken a hold of him, and he couldn't resist it. He stared into the fire for what seemed like an eternity, not knowing whether he was asleep or not.

The old smith started snoring, and Julian quietly crept out of his sleeping bag. In a daze, he tiptoed to his backpack. He took his hunter's knife from its sheath, and snuck to Thomas' sleeping form. He watched the man for a while as he kneeled next to him, and then he slit the Muggle's throat with no more hesitation.

He startled awake, still in his sleeping bag on the forest floor. Thomas wasn't snoring anymore. That was when he realized his hands felt funny. He looked down.

There, clutched in his blood-soaked hand, was the Elder Wand. His stomach turned to ice as realization set in. He sat upright, and looked at his friend on the other side of the fire. Thomas, the old smith, was dead. His throat was sliced open, his neck, torso, and sleeping bag were coated in drying blood, and his grey eyes were empty, lifeless.

He began to shake uncontrollably, and he barely suppressed a scream at the sight of his old friend's corpse lying so close to him. He looked down at his hands again, and realized; this was his doing. It hadn't been just a nightmare: it had really happened.

He clutched the Elder Wand until his knuckles went white. Then he crawled out of his sleeping bag, and began the gruelling task of getting rid of the body.

* * *

Julian awoke with a start, and found himself back in his cot. He shuddered as he exhaled, but he couldn't shake the sight of Thomas' body lying so close to him.

He rubbed his face tiredly, and decided to get out of his cot. Pacing through his house for a while always helped to shake off the awful dreams.

But he couldn't lift the bedcovers.

The door to the shop flew open and slammed against the wall with an ungodly noise, and a strong gust of wind rushed into the room. Julian lay frozen as a creature, black as tar and with far too many limbs, crawled in. Its eyes glowed like those of Satan himself, and its countless teeth shone in the candlelight. Julian couldn't move, and the monster moved closer to him, spreading out its long ape-like arms to snatch him and drag him away.

"Your Lord has heard your prayers, Julian Mercier, and He has deemed them unworthy," it rumbled.

"Please, don't take me," Julian begged, desperately trying to free himself from this spell that froze him in place.

But it was to no avail. He felt the sharp claws sink into his skin as the creature grabbed him and lifted him up like a twig. And as it spread its immense, leathery wings and carried him out of his home into the night, he hoped, prayed, that this was indeed still a dream. He was carried at an unbelievable speed over fields, past coal mines and small villages, and towards a forest he'd hoped he would never have to see again.

They flew past the outcrops he and Thomas had used to hide their horses, and then landed by the edge of the woods. Julian saw the raging flames of Inferno waiting for him in that forest, and he struggled against the creature with all his strength, but its claws only sank further into him. Tears sprung in his eyes, he screamed and he cried, but nothing would help. The heat started to itch his skin, and the pain only increased as they approached the raging flames of the gates to Hell. The fire started to lick at him, but the monster did not stop. He felt the hair on his arms singe off, his eyes became drier and drier until he could not close them anymore, and his pyjamas charred and melted onto his blistering skin. His last screams were smothered as angry flames entered his mouth, charring his lungs as he breathed his last panicked breaths.

Not a trace remained of Julian Mercier's terrible end, except for a wand lying on the forest floor, waiting to be found by an unfortunate passer-by.


	2. Chapter 1

Harry Potter stared at the _Daily Prophet_ in astonishment, amazed as he was with the nerve of the writer. _"Minister Shacklebolt unfit to rule? Lord Castlereagh slams the Minister in his manifesto; calls for return to traditional values"_ , read the title. That was the first oddity of the day.

Intrigued, Harry leafed to the last pages and read the lord's announcement. His mood, which had been so good when he woke up that morning, soured quickly. Castlereagh called Kingsley out on failing to capture all the remaining Death Eaters, and simultaneously criticized his harsh policy in reforming the Wizarding world after the war. With words like "soft power," "appeasement," and "cooperation," the man called for the Minister to restore relations with the traditional core of the Wizengamot. While the title was sensationalized, Castlereagh was clear in his more conservative political positions.

The accusations still rang in his head as he pulled on his crimson Auror robes. He made sure the Elder Wand was strapped securely to his left arm and still invisible to everyone else before he Flooed out of Grimmauld Place and appeared in the Ministry's entrance hall.

* * *

As always, his gaze was drawn to the enormous fountain in the middle of the Ministry hall. It was a massive glass ball, with a gold ring embedded in it and water shooting out the top. The ball floated gracefully above the fountain pond beneath it, and had wings attached to it that stretched through the great Ministry hall all the way to the ceiling. It sparkled in the sunlight that beamed down from the magical glass ceiling up above. Harry remembered, and not with fondness, the process that led up to this memorial.

The war still weighed heavily on him. His relationship with Ginny wasn't going as well as they had imagined it, and he was still having trouble adapting to his new job as an Auror. And then the committee responsible for the new monument in the Ministry hall had presented him their plan: a larger-than-life scene in which Harry was on his knees, surrounded by wicked forces as he killed Voldemort. He had shot that idea down immediately, and he was very glad that Kingsley had supported him and forced them to come up with another design instead. He didn't think the committee would have taken his wishes all too seriously otherwise. They liked their own design too much for that.

He shook off that old bitterness and stepped into an elevator crammed with witches, wizards, and other magical beings. It was just another day at the office. He greeted a few people that passed by in the narrow corridors, and received his usual warm welcome as he stepped into the Auror office. Leslie Proudfoot, Jordan Bennett and Ron Weasley were all there, as well as some of the new recruits that had filled in the gaps left behind by the deaths last summer. Watching those empty desks all day had been tough, and always brought him back to that fateful day when he and Ginny had been chased down by an insane billionaire in a helicopter. But watching new recruits and interns sitting at the desks of old, trusted colleagues and friends wasn't any easier.

His melancholic mood surprised him, and that was the second oddity of the day. His coffee helped him break through his dip, and he dug into the paperwork in the filing cabinet at the back of his office. Working through the wide range of documents, and filing them away once he was done with them was probably his least favourite part of the day, but it was one of those things that just had to happen. He denied another parole request from a dodgy potion seller, checked the documentation of the latest arrests for any inconsistencies or poor handling, and worked his way through his daily stream of work-related mail. He closed it off by reading up on the progress of the new recruits from the Auror academy.

This, on the other hand, had become his favourite part of the day lately. The office had had a serious lack of recruits for the longest time, especially during the generation that went to Hogwarts at the time of Voldemort's second rising. But that problem seemed to be ebbing away now, and everyone in the office was pleased with the quality agents the academy consistently sent them now. It was much too early for Harry to think about retirement, but this work gave him the reassurance that this office would be in good shape when that day eventually came.

Those reports, as well as a good lunch with his co-workers, with many jokes made about the manifesto of Castlereagh, drove the last vestiges of his troubled morning away, and before he knew it, it was time for his weekly meeting with Amelia Bones, head of the DMLE. The old, respected witch was still the powerful politician she always was, and still knew every little thing that went on in this institution. They shared the happenings of that week as well as their plans for the next, discussed the prosperous state of the office, and Harry politely parried any subtle hint that he should take over her chair after her impending retirement.

He made his way back to his desk afterward, but the moment he sat down, Ron entered his office.

"Harry, mate, are you busy?" he asked.

"I just sat down." His gaze fell on the way his friend was wringing his hands. "What's the matter?"

"Just wanted to talk with you. D'you have a minute?"

"Sure, I'll just…" He glanced at the file he'd dug into before the meeting, and pushed it aside. "I'll do this later. Do you want to go somewhere?"

"Yeah, I was thinking we could get a coffee above ground."

"Sounds like a plan."

"Everyone's talking about Castlereagh," Ron noted as they exited the office.

"I'm not surprised," Harry said. "This is the first real sound of opposition against Kingsley since we got rid of most of the old guard from the Ministry. It's absolute drivel, though. Castlereagh purposefully ignores why exactly we reform so much."

"Yeah, but don't you think we could do with improving relations with the Wizengamot? They're blocking every policy they can at the moment because they hate Kingsley's guts – and yours."

"No," Harry said firmly. "They've had their moment in the sun for long enough, and we all know where it lead to."

Ron refrained from further comment.

They sat down a while later at a small table against the wall of a quaint cafe as they discussed Amelia's retirement plans.

"I still don't understand why you won't take the job, you know," Ron said.

"Well it's like I said, I just can't see myself withering away behind an office desk for the rest of my life. I didn't become an Auror for that, you know?"

"Yeah, I know, mate, and you're right at that. But you don't have to be there all the time, right. You could at least take it off her for now, and let her retire before she gets too old, and then stay at that position for a couple years at most. Rake it in for a while, you know? No one's gonna stop you from going back to the Auror office after that."

Harry paused to take a long sip of his cappuccino. "That might not be a bad idea. You should listen to Hermione more often."

Ron's ears reddened and he quickly took a large gulp of coffee. In the past, that wouldn't have bothered Harry that much, but Ron was not supposed to act like that anymore now that they were in their thirties, and this behaviour didn't suggest that. Another oddity.

"What's wrong, Ron?" he asked.

"Well… thing is…"

"C'mon spit it out."

"What, the coffee?"

"Yeah, why not? All over the table, if you please."

Ron chuckled, and Harry was a bit more relieved.

"Right, so there's a couple things I wanted to say, but they're a bit big."

"This better not make me spit out _my_ coffee," Harry commented as he took a sip.

"That sip is at your own risk," Ron said. "Cause, erm…" He took a deep breath. "I want to quit."

Harry didn't spit out his drink, at least. He quickly swallowed it instead. "Uhm… didn't see that coming. That's…" he tried to think of the appropriate words, but they escaped him.

"What do you think of it?" Ron asked nervously.

"Well, I dunno what to think, really," Harry said. "That's a really big decision, I mean… What are you gonna do after this? What made you decide this?"

"That's the second thing I wanted to mention," Ron began.

"Mate, you've got a lot on your plate, haven't you?"

"You have no idea," he chuckled.

"Well, go on then, tell me," Harry said.

Ron opened and closed his mouth a few times, his eyes darting around the room as he tried to say the obviously very troubling words.

"Hermione's pregnant."

This time Harry did spit out his coffee. Into the cup, luckily. Mostly, anyway.

"Blimey!" Harry uttered. "A baby… Ron… God, I guess, congratulations! That's… wow!" He stood up, and Ron followed, and they exchanged a back-slapping hug. They sat down again, Ron beaming at him, his red ears and cheeks clashing with his hair. Harry felt himself mirroring that stupid grin.

"Yeah, it's… I think I reacted about the same way when she told me," Ron said. "I just… I'm gonna be a dad, Harry! And you're gonna be Uncle Harry!"

"A dad…" Harry repeated. "And Uncle Harry, blimey… Do your parents know? Does anyone else? And when did you find out?"

"Hermione told me last week, but we haven't told anyone yet. We wanted to do it appropriately, you know? Lots of people to tell, right, so we thought it'd be best to tell it at the Weasley dinner coming Sunday."

"Yeah, good shout, that. So that's why you want to quit, then?"

Ron's wide grin dimmed somewhat. "Yeah. I had a bit of time to think about what I was gonna do, y'know. 'Cos I can't be fighting dark wizards anymore, right. I'm gonna be a dad!"

"No, I understand completely, more than I'd like," Harry told him, his grin also fading as he thought of his godson, Teddy Lupin.

"Yeah… So I figured I'd get a safer job. Maybe I could help George out in the shop for a while. Lord knows he needs an extra pair of hands. He's got them full of Angelina already, eh?"

Harry snorted. "She's a handful, yeah, lucky bloke. But good luck convincing him, though. He is a Weasley after all."

"I'll choose to ignore that," Ron said good-naturedly. "It'll be alright, I think."

"Yeah… Ron and Hermione, parents… Who'd have thought?"

"I still can't believe it at times, you know?" Ron sighed. "Hang on, is that our caller?"

"You felt it too?" Harry asked, veering up in his seat. He grabbed the small round transmitting device that he and Kingsley had added to the standard Auror gear set last year. It vibrated and chirruped shrilly, the signal that they were needed back in the Ministry immediately. "Must be urgent, then. C'mon, let's go back."

They arrived back in the office to find one of the callers waiting for them at the entrance.

"What is it, Suzie?" Harry asked. The long-term DMLE caller's grim look didn't bode well.

"A house-elf has been murdered – at Hogwarts," she said quietly as she followed Harry and Ron into the office.

Several Aurors within hearing range looked up in shock. Ron muttered a curse next to him.

"I see," Harry said slowly. "How long ago was this?"

"McGonagall said the blood had already dried by the time she discovered it. I've opened up the Floo in your office, it'll send you straight through into the Headmistress's office."

"Thanks." She gave him a short nod and strode back the way she came.

"What d'you want to do?" Ron asked.

"This is Hogwarts," Harry said as he marched into his office and shut the door behind him. "A murdered house-elf usually isn't a case for us, but this is Hogwarts. I'm making this my case. You have time as well, right?"

"Mate, I've had absolutely nothing to do the past month or so. This summer's been quiet."

"That's good," Harry said distractedly, stashing away the open file on his desk. "You're with me. I'm thinking Proudfoot as well, and maybe one of the new recruits. That girl, Claire Johnson, she sounds ready for field work I think."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Come on, let's go."

* * *

"This feels oddly familiar," Leslie Proudfoot said.

"This one's a bit less torn apart, though," Ron added. "More cuts, less bites."

" _This one_ is called Bilfy!" an affronted Minerva McGonagall interjected. "And I expected more professionalism from experienced Aurors!"

"Apologies, Professor," Harry said before Ron could open his mouth again. "It's just that the shock has worn off after all these years, and we've gotten a bit less overwhelmed by sights like this. I assure you that Aurors Weasley and Proudfoot take their jobs very seriously."

"I should hope so," McGonagall bristled. "I can't look at this sight for too long, gentlemen. I'll be in my office if you need me."

"Didn't get any more relaxed with her age, did she?" Ron muttered the moment she disappeared around the corner of the seventh-floor hallway.

"Never was, never will," Harry said. "Considering a house-elf was murdered in her school, it's not really surprising she's upset. And you two," he said, pointing at his two colleagues, "need to remember to act with more discretion when you're around others. We see this stuff often enough, but they don't. Try to remember that, okay?"

Ron had the decency to look somewhat contrite, but Proudfoot just shrugged. Harry sighed and turned towards the body of the house-elf.

"So, dead house-elf, died last night, appears to be cut up with a big knife, and no witnesses to be found. Any ideas? Johnson?"

Claire Johnson, the rookie, looked up from the body, appearing somewhat startled. "No, sir," she said quietly.

"Maybe there was a fight among the elves," Proudfoot suggested. "Do elves fight?"

"Dunno," Ron said. "I suppose we could ask Hermione."

"This one's gonna be kept under covers for now," Harry said. "The letters to the new students are being delivered right now, don't want to cause a panic if we can avoid it."

Claire looked somewhat troubled at that.

"You're not the first one to react like that," Proudfoot said, having noticed it as well. "Our society is a small world. Too much bad news every day and people will get paranoid and start speculating about everything. Best to not shout around this kind of stuff."

She didn't comment, but didn't look convinced in the slightest.

"What's our motto, lass?" Proudfoot asked her.

"Erm, it's _Semper tuebor_ ," Claire said. "I will always protect."

"Protect, maintain, yeah. Try to remember that. You'll get used to this part of the job before you know it, so just follow our lead, and you'll be fine."

"But back to Bilfy here," Harry said. "Let's do a search around the hallway, look for any clues, tracks, traces, and let's take a sample of his blood as well. And after that…" he paused to look his colleagues in the eye. "We're all interviewing some house-elves."

Three groans followed that statement.

* * *

"Are you sure you didn't see anything?" Harry asked the wide-eyed, trembling house-elf in front of him.

The elf looked around the classroom, nervously fiddling with its floppy ears. "No, sir. I's not seen strange, sir. Wilpsy is a good elf, sir!"

"Tell me what you did last night, then," Harry said patiently, making notes at the same time.

"I's not supposed to say, sir. House Elves do never betray their master's trust!" Wilpsy said.

"That's all right, Wilpsy, I have a document from Professor McGonagall here, with permission to know her Elves' tasks." He pushed a hastily scribbled note with the Headmistress's seal stamped on it towards the trembling elf. He picked it up, sniffed it, inspected it closely, and then gave it back to Harry.

"I's a cook, sir," he said. "But I's not having much work in the summer, so I's help the Professors restore the castle instead, sir."

"Were you doing that last night as well, then?"

"Yes, sir. Wilpsy was help Professor Hagry with the painty's on the sixth floor. Then I's went to sleep with the other elves, sir."

"That means you were only one floor below where the murder took place," Harry said. The elf wilted away before his eyes, so he hastily continued. "Don't worry, this is just a simple interview. I'm just trying to figure out what happened, and you're helping immensely with this."

"Is I?" Wilpsy asked, perking up.

"Yes, you are. Now could you tell me if you've heard any ruckus last night while you were helping Hagrid?"

The elf took on a look of concentration. It looked comical on his pointy, rat-like face.

"No, sir," it said. "But I's not working at dark. I's went sleeping before the evil thing happened, sir."

"I see. And at what time did you and Hagrid stop working?"

Again the elf looked pensive.

"It was three hours after third cooking time, sir."

"And at what hour do you cook?"

"Six hours after second cooking time, sir."

Harry balled his left fist under the table and breathed in and out slowly. "Alright. Thank you for your help. It was much appreciated. You can go." The elf thanked him, hopped off the stool, and toddled away.

He buried his head in his hands after Wilpsy left the empty classroom. He was going to have to ask McGonagall for the elves' schedules if he were to make any sense of these testimonies. He crossed Wilpsy off the interrogation list and asked the next elf in.

It was going to be a very long afternoon.

* * *

He took a quick pause in between the interrogations of the elves to return to the Ministry and discuss the situation with Kingsley. He marched quickly across the hallways from the emergency Floo in the DMLE towards the Ministerial office, carefully schooling his features to not show any distress as he passed various Ministry employees. As he stepped inside Kingsley's office, the undersecretary looked up from a list of forms on her desk.

"He's expecting you, you can go right through," she said. He nodded at her and pushed open the door to his suite.

"Ah, Harry, come in," Kingsley said. He stood in front of one of the tall windows, watching the charmed view over a small city park. "Still not finished at Hogwarts?" he asked, turning to him and leaning over his broad leather chair.

"No, it's taking a while. Is this about how we're going to make this case public?"

"Then we'll keep this short, and yeah, it is. We're keeping total silence about this case, at least until we're sure this wasn't the work of the last remaining supporters of Voldemort."

"I thought the same thing."

"I knew you would. The Wizengamot is getting louder and louder now that the war is becoming a distant memory. You've read the _Prophet_ today, right?"

"Castlereagh?"

"That man is every bit as extreme as the most conservative members of the Wizengamot," the Minister said harshly. "His talk of moderation and dialogue is just their first step in making the institution the most powerful force in the Ministry again. _"Moderation and dialogue"_ is just a thin veneer to bring back exactly what we've tried so hard to remove. And this elf case will only give them more ammunition to ruin both me and what we've achieved so far. The Ministry is more tolerant and humane than it has ever been, and they will not take this away from us again."

"Are you sure about this?" Harry asked, slightly intimidated by the man's intensity today. "If this leaks it'll only get worse."

"It won't leak out," Kingsley said. "We'll make sure of that, I trust you."

"Then I'll go back to Hogwarts now."

"Good man. We'll speak soon."

Harry nodded and went straight back to the wizarding school to finish up the interviews.

* * *

After a few long hours of talking to house-elves in various states of distress, the four Aurors gathered up in the Headmaster's office with Professor McGonagall to share some of their findings with her.

"The elves saw or heard nothing coming from the seventh floor," Harry said to her, rubbing his eyes. "But Auror Johnson interviewed an elf who worked near the entrance. Johnson?"

Johnson breathed in shakily and sat up straighter in her chair. "Erm, yeah. One minute." She leafed through her neat set of notes with shaking hands. Harry wished he could make her more at ease. He had absolutely no use for frightened Aurors. "Hooky was working in the greenhouses, and she said she saw something moving around near the edge of the forest towards the end of her shift."

"Thank you," he said with what he hoped was a friendly smile. "So as you can see, Professor, it's a true mystery. We know two things: that Bilfy was on cleaning duty when she died. It looks like she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Hooky's story tells us that our killer may have snuck in and out of the castle. But we're far from sure about that, so I do want to come back tomorrow and interview the teachers as well, if that's alright with you. Just to be sure."

The Headmistress's lips pressed together tightly. "That is a grave situation, Mr Potter. It will have serious repercussions. We might be forced to close the school until the killer is caught, if what you're saying is true."

"It won't have repercussions for now," Harry said.

"Oh?" McGonagall asked. Her disapproving gaze almost made Harry back down.

"I've had a word with Kingsley," he continued. "He wants to keep this under wraps from the Ministry until we have a suspect."

"And do you agree with that decision?" McGonagall demanded.

Harry swallowed. "It's not my decision to make, Professor," he said, hoping she would relent.

She crossed her arms and kept staring at him.

He cleared his throat. "Kingsley's been under fire lately. The Wizengamot thinks he didn't do enough to catch the remaining Death Eaters after the War, and they're using that to try and discredit him. Have you read Lord Castlereagh's manifesto in the Prophet today?" The Professor nodded stiffly. "We just want to make sure we're not dealing with a Death Eater here before we make the case public. It would only feed the cause of the Wizengamot."

"Then we'd better hope that we aren't dealing with one," McGonagall said. "I tell you, though, this secrecy won't do you any good!"

Harry briefly touched the second wand hidden under the sleeve of his left arm. "We'll be leaving, Professor, if that's alright with you," he said carefully.

"Yes, it's already past six. You all have families waiting for you. Though I presume you cannot divulge them anything either?"

"Err, no."

McGonagall sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose, and stood up to lead them to the hearth. "Very well then. Good night, Aurors."

"We'll try to keep you updated, Professor. And we'll be back tomorrow at eleven to interview the teachers," Harry said as his colleagues stepped through the fireplace.

"I genuinely hope you and Kingsley know what you're doing," the Headmistress said tiredly after the others had gone. Harry smiled a weary smile, and Flooed back to the office.

* * *

His watch showed 6:30 as he stepped past the Fidelius Charm and pushed open the door to number 12, Grimmauld Place. He was glad he and Ginny were late eaters, otherwise he'd have missed loads of meals over the past few months.

"Is that you, Harry?" he heard her yell as the door closed behind him.

"Yes, it's me!" he called back. He hung up his coat, took off his shoes and padded into the living room.

"Scoot," he said as he approached the couch.

"Good to see you too," Ginny snorted. He sunk down next to her and gave her a peck on the lips.

"Yeah well," he said. "You try being cheerful after interviewing loads of house-elves all day."

"Oh dear," Ginny chuckled. "Don't let Kreacher hear you moan like that about his kin."

"Kreacher doesn't hear anything unless you shout at him these days," Harry retorted. "Hardly leaves his room anymore either."

"True, poor thing. Big new case then?"

"Yeah," he sighed, his smile fading a bit.

"Anything you can tell me?"

"Nah, Kingsley wants to play politics."

Ginny pouted. "Not even a teeny hint for your poor old girlfriend?"

Harry shook his head sadly. "Sorry, Gin. My lips are sealed."

"Mm. Best put them to use in another way then," Ginny said, leaning towards him suggestively.

Harry pushed back and turned her on her back. "Oh, Miss Weasley, I will," he growled. They needed to start cooking soon, but at the moment, he really didn't care about that.


	3. Chapter 2

The following day, Harry walked past the familiar Ministry entrance hall, with purpose in his step. The crowd was still abuzz with talk about Kingsley and his opponents, and there was a murder case at Hogwarts right under their noses, one that needed to be solved while at the same time keeping total secrecy. Strong leadership was vital right now, and he was bloody well going to give it to the Aurors.

Nonetheless a grin threatened to crack through his stern façade. He and Ginny had eventually gotten to cooking, but neither had wanted to let go of each other. Thinking back to Ginny stirring the rice dish while bent over the counter, her bum jutting out so –

"Morning," Ron said.

He'd reached the Auror office without realizing it.

"Morning," Harry responded, quickly slipping back into his Head Auror persona again. He shut the door behind him and closed the blinds with a swish of his holly wand. That action garnered the attention of the entire office.

"Thank you for your attention, everyone," he began, marching to the wall filled with "Wanted" posters at the front of the office. "I wanted to inform you all of a new case that's opened up yesterday. It involves the murder of a house-elf at Hogwarts." He heard murmurs, whispers, and hisses around the room. The criminals on the posters listened with rapt attention as well. "That it happened where all our children are supposed to be educated in safety makes this a most serious matter, as you all understand, and therefore the case will be put under my personal command. A case like this is always very fickle, and as long as we don't have any leads, we will need to maintain complete silence about this to anyone outside of this office. That includes press, colleagues, friends, and family. This will not lead to a mass panic. You all know the drill. Understood?"

The Aurors murmured their assent.

"Any questions?" No one raised their hand. "Good, back to work everyone! Aurors Weasley, Proudfoot and Johnson, my office please."

He opened the blinds again, waved merrily at the curious passers-by gathered in the corridor, and stepped into his office. Ron followed a second later, with Johnson and Proudfoot trailing behind him.

"Morning, all," Harry said. "I want to keep it short for now. We'll be interviewing all the Hogwarts teachers that aren't currently on holiday. Professor McGonagall invited us for lunch there as well, so I imagine we'll stay there until about two. We'll discuss our findings when we get back here. That okay with you?" No-one spoke up, so he dismissed them again.

"What's got you so chipper this morning?" Ron asked, lingering behind for a moment. "I expected you to step in here with a face like thunder like the last time we had such a nasty case."

"Just excited for work, Ron," Harry said, grinning tightly. "It's been quiet enough the past few months, and it's high time for us to catch some baddies again."

"If you say so, mate," Ron said, shaking his head.

"Oh, before I forget. D'you and Hermione wanna come over to Grimmauld Place? Celebrate the good news, and maybe talk about how and when you're leaving the office?"

"I dunno," he said. "I'll think about it. Anything else?"

"Yeah, one cup of coffee, thanks." Ron showed him his middle finger in reply.

* * *

"Harry! Good ter see yeh!" Hagrid's booming voice echoed through the hall. Harry stepped forward and into the crushing embrace of his friend.

"Good to see you too, Hagrid," Harry mumbled into the man's coat. "How have you been?"

"Oh, jus' fine. Mos'ly been keepin' yer godson an' 'is friends in line," he said, winking at him. "Yeh an' Ron'll be stopping by for tea some time now, won't yeh?"

"Definitely," Harry assured him. "But we really need to start now, so come on in." They went into the same classroom Harry had interviewed the elves in yesterday.

"Let me just quickly write the date and our names… there. So, could you tell me what you did on the night of the twelfth of August?"

"Oh, I was restorin' paintings, I was. Most o' the frames needed a good reparin', so I was doin' that. Made ol' Bertie Bingbonger III finally shu' up at leas'. I've been on the fifth floor mostly the pas' week, an' I moved ter the sixth that night."

"And at what times were you on the sixth floor?"

"I reckon i' was from around seven ter nine. Had ter lock the front doors after that, so I went back ter me hut."

"And did you hear anything suspicious while you were there?"

"I though' about that the past few nights, but I can't remember anythin'."

"You had a house-elf helping you, didn't you?"

"Wilpsy, tha's righ'. Good elf, he was."

"Did you notice anything about her, then?"

Hagrid thought about that for a while. Harry took this pause to notice the many grey streaks in his hair and beard. With a pang of guilt he realised that he hadn't visited one of his oldest friends in ages.

"No, nothin'. I mean, elves are odd creatures, they are, so plen'y o' mad things ter talk about. But no, nothin' out o' the ordinary."

"And what about the door, then? Did you see anything strange there? Was the door open? Did you lock it the right way?"

"Well I s'pose I wouldn' be a good groundskeeper if I di'nt, would I?" Hagrid said, sounding somewhat indignant about the question. "The door was closed 's well, I reckon. But I can't be too sure. I've been through that door right near all my life now, an' I don' really think about it anymore."

"Alright. Anything else noteworthy you'd like to mention?"

Hagrid shook his head sadly. "I jus' hope yeh lot catch whoever did this. That poor elf didn't deserve that end. An' it happened at Hogwarts o' all places! Gallopin' gorgons, it's s'posed ter be the safest place in all o' Britain!"

"I know, but we'll catch them," Harry promised. "We'll do whatever we can to keep the school safe."

"Oh, I know yeh will. Yer a good man, you are. Nothin's impossible when yeh set yer mind on it."

Harry had to swallow a lump in his throat before he could reply. "Thanks," he then said. "Will I see you at lunch?"

"No, I'm sorry. Got a little summat t' do in the Forest. Bu' don' be a stranger now, alrigh'?"

"I won't. I'll stop by for tea soon."

The half-giant drew him into another crushing hug and lumbered out of the classroom. He closed the door behind him and paused to look around the corridor for a short moment. No one was there. He took one last glance back at the closed door behind him before walking away.

* * *

Lunch in the Great Hall with the other professors was a subdued affair. The mood inside the castle was sombre and on edge, and no one said much during the meal. Harry reckoned Professor McGonagall's small speech imploring total secrecy about this case to all the teachers didn't help matters, either. Johnson was even quieter than she'd been lately, and Ron's attention was firmly directed at his eggs, bangers and roast potatoes. After a few disastrous attempts at small talk, Harry decided to watch the teachers instead. It felt funny, he thought, to observe this mix of old guard and new blood for any suspicious behaviour, when he still vividly remembered spending every meal here as a student.

He didn't notice anything suspicious, and he and the others weren't inclined to linger very long at the castle. They said goodbye to the professors and Flooed back to the Ministry.

Not a single teacher had noticed anything, and the others shared his conclusion that nobody had stood out as suspicious. The lack of any traces at the crime scene didn't help either, and thus Harry found himself in a sour mood as he and Ron begged off for a quick coffee break. Today, Harry concluded, had been a waste of time.

"We'll catch them," Ron said in an attempt to cheer him up. "We've never had a case we couldn't solve."

"Corban Yaxley," Harry said flatly.

"Well, except one then." Ron leaned over the table. "Hang on, you don't think it's him who's behind this, do you?" he whispered.

"I dunno," he said, discreetly casting a Notice-Me-Not Charm over their table. "Who else should we suspect? Who else is adept enough to sneak into Hogwarts and kill an elf without leaving even a single trace behind?"

"Mate, there's quite a few bad wizards walking around in this country. Remember that dodgy potion seller we caught last month? How many tongues were lost because of him?"

"They grew them back at St. Mungo's eventually, though. Anyway, who else could it be, then? You tell me one person who you think is able to do this."

"I dunno! We haven't even started the case, we've got nothing! And why would he be in Hogwarts? Why would he kill an elf?"

"Because he's a Death Eater, Ron."

"No, listen, Harry. You think it's him because he's escaped us for thirteen years. You think it's him because you're obsessed with him. I know you and Kingsley made a vow to catch every last Death Eater, but you need to stop letting it get in the way of things."

"It's not getting in the way of things!"

"You've got old Craig Robertson on a full-time search for him ever since you became Head Auror, and before that you did it yourself. C'mon, I know you. Remember sixth year and Malfoy?"

"But I was right, wasn't I?"

"Maybe, but back then you had something to go on, when you saw him at Borgin and Burkes. Now? You have nothing, mate."

"But–"

"Stop obsessing over him for now. Let's just do it by the book, that's the best way to solve this."

"And what if I'm right?"

"You're not. But," Ron raised his finger to silence him. "If you are, I'm buying you whatever you want me to."

"I'm gonna pick out the most expensive whisky I can find."

"Deal." They shook hands.

"Another subject. D'you want to come over to Grimmauld Place tonight?"

"Oh, I dunno," Ron said, shaking his head. "I kind of want to keep the baby a secret until this Sunday. Make it a birthday gift for Ginny when we're celebrating. Besides, Hermione can't drink."

"You, however, are a man, and not pregnant," Harry said. "C'mon, I'll let you do a rehearsal for the big event with Ginny and me. Make it an early present for her."

"She is my favourite sister," Ron mused.

"I'll pour us some of that elven wine," Harry teased.

Ron stood he stood up. "Okay, I'll talk to Hermione about it. See you in five?"

"At most, Weasley!" Harry called after him. He threw the rest of his coffee back so that he wouldn't have to sit alone in the canteen for too long and went back into the office thinking of elven wine, murder, and babies.

* * *

"Oi, Ginny, get your clothes back on, I've brought your brother and Hermione with me!" Harry called as he entered Grimmauld Place.

"Really?" she called back. She walked down the stairs to greet them. "It's good that I didn't plan my happy surprise for today then," she said saucily.

Ron and Hermione stepped inside after Harry. They exchanged greetings and took off their jackets.

"These two have got something to tell you, Ginny," Harry said, failing to keep a wide grin from his face.

"Ron got himself fired and Hermione wants to cancel the wedding?" Ginny asked.

"How'd you know?" Hermione said in mock-surprise.

"Her amazing intuition," Harry said deadpanned. "Right, I think we'd best sit down for this. Anyone up for a cup of tea?"

A few minutes later they were gathered around the fire, steaming mugs of tea in their hand, Harry enjoying the warmth of his girlfriend next to him on the couch.

"So what's this all about?" Ginny asked. Harry thoroughly enjoyed their nervousness as they stared into each other's eyes in a silent conversation. After a moment Ron cleared his throat and stood up.

"Ginny, well and Harry too I suppose… We're… I mean Hermione's… Well, she's pregnant."

Ginny stared at the couple for a brief moment, before squealing and throwing herself at them. Harry made sure no one was looking at him, then he wiped the happy tears from his eyes. His heart swelled as he watched the three exchange hugs and well-wishes, and it was not the hot tea and the toasty fire, but the love he felt for these people that truly warmed him at that moment.

They decided to warm up the pizzas they had stored in the freezer. Hermione's protests that it was unhealthy fell on deaf ears. Harry nipped off to the basement to fetch one the bottles of wine (strictly water for Hermione), and the warm, happy mood only increased as the bottle got emptier and emptier. Ron only had eyes for his fiancée; otherwise he'd have wholly disapproved of the way Harry and Ginny were intertwined at their end of the table.

After clearing the dishes, Ron grabbed Harry and steered him away from the girls for a moment.

"I've thought about the job, y'know," he said.

"You've changed your mind?" Harry asked hopefully.

Ron shook his head sadly. "No. I can't do it anymore, not when I'm about to become a dad." They paused to look at Ginny and Hermione. The pair's attention was mainly directed at Hermione's belly as they chattered excitedly. Harry had never seen her glow with happiness as much as she did now, and he understood perfectly why Ron was head over heels for her.

"I understand," he said softly. "It'll be boring without you at the office, though."

"Yeah, you'll have to find a new resident clown now," Ron quipped.

"No one will be able to top your performance though."

"Git. Anyway, you won't have to worry about it just yet."

"What d'you mean?" Harry asked, looking away from the girls again.

"Well, I can't leave this case without solving it, could I? You'd be hopelessly lost without my genius."

"We're already lost, mate."

"True. And we can't leave it like that, doesn't feel right. So what d'you say? One last time?"

"Let's make it one to remember," Harry said. They clinked glasses and downed the last of their wine.

Ron and Hermione left soon thereafter, with many promises to do this again, and even more hugs. As soon as the door closed, Ginny looked at him like predator would look at its prey. It was a while before they went to sleep that night.

* * *

When Harry opened his eyes, he wasn't in his bed anymore, and Ginny wasn't next to him either. The shadows that surrounded him slowly retreated as his eyes got used to the dark, and the mist that surrounded him cleared a bit, revealing the massive, dark outlines of a forest. Trees surrounded him on all sides, their black finger-like branches, bent and broken with abuse, pointing accusingly at him. He didn't like it here, so he decided to move. But even after moving away from the spot he woke up in, the scene didn't change. Trees still surrounded him on all sides, towering above him, and the mist clung to him more and more, soaking his clothes, face, and hair. He kept walking into the same direction, increasing his tempo as he felt more and more lost. But there was no end to the trees encircling him.

The more he became convinced that he was running in circles, the more he also became aware that he was being watched. He heard twigs break when he wasn't moving, and leaves rustle even though there was not a breeze of wind here. The eerie sounds echoed all around him in this deathly silence. Yet when he turned around to look for the thing chasing him, he saw nothing but tall, dark trees, and their pointing, broken fingers.

He turned around again and ran, his legs moving on their own as he trampled through the overgrown shrubbery, its bare, twisting branches hooking at his legs, and then letting go again with a painful tug. But the thing kept following him. Bushes moved and rustled to his right, then to his left, then directly behind him. Footsteps that weren't his own rushed by all around him, but no matter where he turned, there were only the shadows and trees, mocking him in their silent judgement.

Then he heard a sound unlike the others. It wasn't the sound of running or twigs breaking under a foot. He stopped running to listen more closely. Something was slithering across the leaf bed, and it was dragging itself closer toward him.

And then he saw it, slowly appearing from behind the trees. It was a person, but barely. Its clitted hair hung to its skull in withered and filthy locks. Its limbs, barely covered by the tattered stripes of cloth that once were clothes, were ghostly white and eerily thin, the bony arms shaking violently as it dragged itself toward him with all its might. Harry wanted to run away, anything not to see or touch the freakish monster, but his legs had turned to lead. He was forced to watch it wriggle through the wet, muddy leaves towards him. The closer the thing got, the more clearly he could see its face through the mass of hair. He saw a mess of scars running along its disturbing features, and two brown, feral eyes, watching him intently, judging him, inviting him. Though his mind screamed no, Harry's body answered the thing's silent call, and he slowly edged forward. He could smell the rotting flesh, the unwashed carcass of a man wasted away all alone for an eternity. He reached out for it, curious to feel what it felt like, if the cheesy skin was still warm to the touch, if he could feel breath if he held his hand to the creature's mouth. He thought he heard its gurgling breath quicken and become more raw as his hand inched closer to it…

* * *

And then he woke up in his own bed. He sat upright, the blanket rolled off his clammy, sweaty torso. He winced as he felt a searing pain in his left arm. He jerked it from under the blanket, and the pain slowly subsided. He must have twisted it in his sleep again. As his heart gradually stopped racing and his panicked breathing slowed down, he began to make out the unclear shapes of the dark bedroom. It was at these times where he hated Grimmauld Place. With company, it was a great house to live in. But as soon as he was alone, it became a dark, eerie mansion. And even though he'd long removed the wall where the screeching portrait of Walburga Black used to hang, he still felt her wrathful spirit in the hallways. A part of this house never wanted him here.

But he wasn't alone, he remembered. He glanced at his side. Ginny laid there, her back toward him, her knees tucked upward and her red hair splayed over her face. He badly wanted to touch her, but he also had to use the loo. Yet when he looked back at the dark wooden door to his bedroom, the nightmare he'd just woken up from came back to him. He asked his bladder for forgiveness, folded the sheets back over him, and slid up against Ginny. He drifted back into sleep with his arm around her and his knees tucked against the back of hers, as if he was trying to shelter her from whatever had stopped him from getting out of bed.

* * *

When he woke up the next morning, he was surprised to find that Ginny was already out of bed. His bladder screamed for relief, so he jumped out and raced to the loo. After a quick shower he dressed up and went downstairs into the kitchen for a small breakfast before work. Ginny had already eaten, and as usual had left her dishes unwashed in the sink. Harry still didn't understand why she did that, despite there being a quick, simple charm to clean them.

After he'd made his toast and sat down with the Daily Prophet before him, he remembered again that she had an early training session at the Harpies today. He loved his job, but it was hard not to be jealous of her for these days: waking up early in the crisp summer morning to train with an all-women team in the clean air of the remote Welsh countryside. He remembered reading a smutty story about that exact scenario during the lonely times after he broke up with Julie, but he had stopped reading it when he found out it prominently featured Ginny. That was before he was ready to admit that he still had feelings for her.

He felt the tiredness itching in his eyes as he Flooed into the Ministry atrium, but he didn't think it would bother him much today. It normally only hit him after he came home and had time to calm down after work. So he tried his best to shut last night out of his mind and get on with the day instead. The Hogwarts murder case was more important than a nightmare, after all.

He also had to keep up on his duties as Head Auror. He'd been slacking off in that aspect the last few days. The disturbing murder at Hogwarts, Castlereagh's manifesto, and Ron's announcements had been keeping him distracted enough. But Ron was staying with the Aurors until the end of this case, and said case was at a complete dead end after two days already, so he decided to pick up his role as office leader again.

Starting with making Claire Johnson feel a bit more at ease. Because he didn't understand why she was so nervous all of a sudden. He'd read the reports during her training, and when he interviewed her for a position among the Aurors, she seemed like a bright, enthusiastic girl, ready to find her place in the life of grownups. As she sat there during her interview, fidgeting in her seat and looking around his office in wonderment, she reminded him a bit of Tonks. Maybe he was wrong about that initial assessment, but he wasn't going to give up so soon.

He entered the Auror office, bade the crew a good morning and sat down at his desk to work through his daily tasks.

He stopped by Claire's desk later.

"Is everything going alright?" he asked.

She looked up in surprise. "Hmm? Oh, hello Auror Potter. Yes, it's going well, thank you." "Good. Well, back to work, then," he said, noticing her distracted, slightly glassy stare.

"Right."

"Oh and, erm, good on you for keeping your desk so tidy. The others can learn a lot from you."

"Thank you," she half-whispered, returning his polite smile with an unease that made his skin crawl.

He didn't stay a minute longer, and awkwardly shuffled back to his own desk, ignoring Ron's snickering as he passed by him.

* * *

That evening, he was earlier at home than Ginny. Knowing how much she loved to sit back and relax after a long day of training, he cleaned the living room and kitchen. He found a short letter from Andromeda Tonks on the dinner table, asking him how he was doing, and telling him that Teddy was brooding again. Harry resolved to visit them this weekend. Maybe he could finally take Ginny with him. He'd been meaning to do that ever since they got back together this spring, but they never got around to it.

He debated what to do next. He could do the wash, but he was also alone for the first time in a while, and his thoughts strayed to the Elder Wand strapped to his left arm. He'd been wearing it ever since he retrieved it, afraid of letting it stray away from him, but he never tested it, not even to see to see how it felt. Wand lore scared him. That was mostly down to the creepy introduction Ollivander had given him when he was eleven, but nonetheless, _"the wand chooses the wizard"_ had always made his skin crawl. That was why he was scared of the Elder Wand. He was worried using it would affect him, and as always with worries, the longer he left it untouched, the larger it grew. He knew he needed to do something about that, cast a few simple spells to dispel the fear, but, like many other things, he just never got around to it.

 _And that ends now,_ he thought, and with that he went upstairs to the barely-used attic (it would be less disastrous if something were to happen there rather than in the living room).

He flicked on the lights. The room was large, he knew, but it didn't feel like it. Ever since he'd lived here it has always been filled with boxes, closets, old furniture and other things he hadn't bothered to clear out. Julie, his ex-girlfriend, had likened it to what he had told her about the Room of Hidden Things, before it got destroyed by fiendfyre in the Battle of Hogwarts. That was before she cheated on him, though.

He reversed the cloaking charms on the wand and took it out of its strap. It felt cold in his hand, but not uncomfortably so, and the grip was curiously similar to his holly wand. He swished it around a few times, and that felt good too, so he tried to summon a cardboard box to him.

But nothing happened.

" _Accio!"_ he called again, but the box barely moved.

Confused, he pulled out his holly wand again and tried the same spell, this time with success, and the box zoomed across the attic and landed at his feet. He cast the spell on another box, this time with the Elder Wand again, but it didn't work. Now thoroughly confused, he tried a few other spells but nothing changed. Seeing as it was about time to start cooking dinner, he decided to quit for today, and come back to it some other time.

* * *

"Is something wrong?" Ginny asked, breaking through his thoughts about wands.

Harry looked up from his plate of spaghetti. "No," he said. "Why?"

"I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "You just seem a bit out of it. Are you thinking about Teddy?"

"To be honest, yeah," he said. And he genuinely was. September was rapidly approaching, and the longer this case went unsolved, the more uneasy he felt about Teddy going back to Hogwarts. But he couldn't tell her that, of course.

"You can tell me, you know," she said.

"I can't," Harry said. "I want to tell you, I really do, Ginny. It's just…"

"You're struggling to plan something for my birthday?"

"Keep asking," he said, smirking. "And don't worry, I have it planned to a T."

"So what else is it then?" she mused. "Kingsley wants to play politics? Is that it?"

He sighed. "I'm an open book, aren't I?" he said. He spun some spaghetti on his spoon and put it in his mouth.

"Only for me," she said smugly. "So does it have to do with his brooding?"

He swallowed. "Ginny, don't," he warned.

"Sorry. Or does it have something to do with him going back to Hogwarts soon?"

"How's the season's preparation coming along?" Harry interjected.

"I'll take that as a yes, then. No, it's going pretty well, actually. I mean, Gwenog's retired, so we all have to get used to that. But the new trainer isn't that bad. She's got big shoes to fill, but the team knows that and the mood's pretty good because of that."

"Do you see Gwenog around still?" he asked.

"Well, no, but she's travelling around the Caribbean the whole summer," she said. "Imagine that? An entire summer in the Caribbean, just you, me, and a lovely beach all for ourselves?"

"What, and our holiday in Spain wasn't enough for you?" he asked, amused.

"Clearly not, was it?"

"Well sorry, then," he said drily. "But I can't help it that I'm oh-so-important for the Ministry. Tell you what: how about we go somewhere for New Year's? We'll spend Christmas with your Mum and Dad and the whole family, and after that we go somewhere nice and warm for the rest of the holidays. Is that an idea?"

Ginny resolutely laid down her fork. "Yes. You've got a deal, Mr Potter!" she proclaimed, sticking out her hand.

"Pleasure doing business with you, Miss Weasley," he said, shaking her hand.


	4. Chapter 3

**Author's note:** hey all. Thank you very much for the reviews so far. I'll be away for the coming week, so the next update will take a little longer.

.

* * *

They arrived at Andromeda's house the next day, just outside the town of Tenby, in Pembrokeshire, and Harry rang the bell. It was a Saturday, so he and Ginny both had all the time in the world to pay a visit to Andromeda and Teddy. Ginny had the idea yesterday that they should spend the day at the beach, since the weather was so good, and Harry wholeheartedly agreed with her. He hoped Teddy liked it, too. He'd noticed that his godson had become less outgoing now that he entered his teenage years. Andromeda told him it was normal for boys of his age, but Harry didn't like it.

Andromeda opened the door. "Harry, dear, it's wonderful to see you again! Oh, and Ginny Weasley, it's been ages!"

"It has!"

"Hey, Andy," Harry said, kissing her cheek after they'd stepped inside the narrow hallway. He watched her and Ginny hug somewhat hesitantly as he took off his jacket and shoes.

"Teddy's upstairs?" he asked.

"Yeah, he is. Come sit down for some tea first, please." He noticed that her smile got a bit less wide.

"It's good to see you again, Andromeda," Ginny said after they'd sat down on the couch.

"Oh, call me Andy, please. Harry and Teddy do it as well, and having two names would be awfully confusing," she said warmly, turning on the stove. "And it's good to see you too. I must say, you look fantastic! Quidditch doing you well, I see?"

"Yeah, it is, thanks! You look great as well!"

"Oh, I'm almost fifty years old, girl, stop it."

"Always fishing for compliments, are you, Andy?" Harry said, grinning.

"I need them, Harry," she replied seriously. "Life as a single grandmother is hard, you know."

"So you still haven't given in to poor old Ben Yorke yet?"

"Ben Yorke?" Ginny asked.

"Andy's courtier," Harry replied.

"He is not! He's a lovely bloke and a good friend, that's all."

"He also likes giving you flowers at every occasion. When did he give you those roses?" he asked, pointing at a vase of white roses on the dinner table.

"This Thursday," Andy admitted.

"They're lovely," Ginny said. "How did you two meet?"

Seeing that she and Andy got along well enough, Harry decided to leave them alone for a minute and go upstairs to greet Teddy.

He knocked on the door of his room. "Can I come in?" he asked. He got a muffled response that sounded vaguely like a "yes", so he opened the door and went in. Teddy lay stretched out on his bed and was reading a Quidditch magazine. His hair was currently a dull brown, always a sign that he was having a bit of a dip.

"Hey, Teddy."

"Hey." No hug, no enthusiastic greeting anymore, but Harry was slowly getting used to that.

"Mind if I sit down?" he asked. Teddy pulled in his legs as a response, and Harry sat down on the foot end of the bed.

"So what's up?"

Teddy shrugged behind his magazine. "Just reading," he mumbled.

"Well, I can see that. Don't you want to go outside, though? The weather's amazing."

"Don't feel like it."

"Mind telling your godfather why?"

Another shrug. It wasn't a "no," though, and that was encouraging. Harry left it at that for a moment, and looked around the room instead. He flicked his wand a couple of times at the floor and banished the dirty laundry to the basket in the corner. It still needed cleaning, but at least it looked a bit less messy. He and Teddy had done the interior a few years back. He'd done most of the work, and Teddy had happily taken on the role of stern advisor to make sure that it was exactly like he wanted it. And the room was certainly true to the wishes of a ten-year-old boy. The walls were a dark green colour, and one side was teeming with moving velociraptors, triceratopses, T-rexes and other dinosaurs that Teddy liked. The floor had the brown colour of a rainforest floor, and the ceiling was painted blue, with some clouds dotted around. Teddy had wanted to feel like he was in a Jurassic forest, and Harry was pretty satisfied with the result. He doubted the boy would be happy with it in a couple years' time, though. It would probably be too childish for his tastes by then.

"I don't wanna go downstairs," Teddy then said, breaking through his thoughts.

"Why not?"

He hesitated, gripping the magazine tighter than normal.

"D'you remember what we talked about earlier this summer? About erm… girls, and feelings, and erm…"

"Oh, yeah," Harry said, feeling a lot less comfortable than a few seconds before. "Yeah, I remember."

"Well, you also told me about erm… _pleasuring yourself_." He stumbled through those last words as quickly as he could.

"Ah."

"It's just… ugh!" He threw the magazine in his lap and stared at his hands in anger. "Andy saw me," he said in the tiniest voice. "In the bathroom."

"Oh dear," Harry said. The discomfort and the absurdity of this conversation almost made him burst out laughing, but he kept it in. "When did this happen?"

"Yesterday."

"So now you don't want to go downstairs because you don't want Andy to see you?"

"Yeah."

"What about when you're hungry or thirsty?"

"Haven't thought about that yet. Breakfast was bad enough."

Harry chuckled at that.

"Did this ever happen to you when you grew up?" Teddy asked.

Harry instantly stopped laughing.

"Yeah, it did, once," he said thoughtfully.

"What happened?"

He took a deep breath. "Well, I was… you know. And then my Aunt Petunia walked in."

"What did she do?"

"She threw me into the shower after she made me pull on my clothes again, and then she turned it on at the lowest temperature. Kept me in there for a while. Called me all sorts of nasty things too while she kept the door shut."

He met Teddy's incredulous gaze and gave him a sad smile.

"I'd rather have Andy's jokes than that," Teddy said quietly.

"Me too," Harry replied.

They were silent for a moment, Teddy breaking eye contact first.

"I had a plan for today, by the way," Harry then said. "I brought Ginny along, and I figured we could spend the day at the beach. How d'you feel about that?"

"You brought Ginny?" Teddy asked, perking up.

"Yeah, I did. So what do you think?"

"Yeah," he said, sounding happier. "Yeah, I'd like that."

"Do you want Andy to come with us too?"

Teddy turned beet red. "Um… If she wants to, I guess…"

"I'll ask her, okay? Now pull on your swimming trunks and come downstairs for your tea. We'll leave after that."

"Okay!"

"Oh, and Teddy?"

"Yeah?"

"We will never talk about this again. Ever."

"Never," Teddy repeated with all his conviction. And with that, he jumped up off the bed and started rummaging around his closet. Harry left him to himself and went downstairs again.

"Oh, hi," Andy said when he entered the living room again. He sat down next to Ginny and grabbed his mug of tea. "Did you get through to him?"

"Yeah, we had a good talk," he said, failing to keep a smirk off his face. Andy winked at him. "He's pulling on his swimming trunks now. Do you want to come with us, Andy?"

"And torture that poor boy even more? My God, he was almost crying from shame at breakfast! No, you three have fun together. I've got enough to do here at home, so don't worry about me."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, yes, you sweet boy, it's all right."

"What's wrong with Teddy?" Ginny asked worriedly.

"Sorry Gin, godfather's trust," he said lightly.

"Ohh," she said. "No, please don't tell me about _that_."

"I won't, don't worry," he said as Andromeda broke out laughing.

Teddy entered the room soon after. To Harry's relief he greeted Ginny with enthusiasm and didn't reject her hug. Seeing his girlfriend and godson together like that made his heart swell with joy, and he breathed in deeply to try and avoid tearing up from his sudden burst of emotion. Andy gave him a knowing look, one that Harry returned when Teddy ignored her completely and sat down in the last chair available.

"So how are you doing, Teddy?" Ginny asked.

"Fine, I guess. You?"

Harry was glad to see the beginnings of comfortable small talk getting ingrained into him. He really was growing up.

"Oh, I'm all dandy," Ginny replied breezily. "Quidditch and Harry keep me busy enough these days. How's your summer going so far?"

"Good. Not much to do, so that's cool."

"What do you mean, not much to do?" Andromeda interjected. "You've been going into town to meet up with that lovely girl almost every day, what's her name? Amanda?"

Teddy didn't reply, but sent a furious look towards his grandmother, one that clearly asked her to stop.

"Amanda?" Harry asked. "That's new. How did you meet her?"

"She's just a friend from town," Teddy said. "And she's _not_ my girlfriend, Andy! Stop smiling!"

"Why should I?" Andy asked innocently. "The sun's out, Harry's here, he's finally brought a girlfriend here for the first time in about ten years…"

From the corner of his eye, Harry saw Ginny stare at him in surprise.

"And I really must say, Harry, you look better than you have in ages. I don't know what it is, but it just makes me so happy to see you like that, it really does."

"Thanks, Andy," Harry said warmly, trying not to get distracted by Ginny's blazing look.

They left after they'd had their tea. Harry decided against Apparating, because the walk to the beach was so nice, and he wanted Ginny to see it at least once. They walked through the small village Andy and Teddy lived in, noting the well-kept state of it, and the many luxurious cars on the driveways. He had to stop Ginny from admiring them too loudly every time they walked past another one. This part of the country was well off, and Harry could see it visibly enjoying the laid-back feeling of a warm, dry summer weekend. They quickly arrived at the edge of the village, and strolled through the forest bordering the sea, enjoying the cool, fresh air the shadow-rich woods provided them, while birds made their presence known around them with their beautiful song. Teddy, however, hadn't discovered yet what "relaxing" meant, and he was a flurry of movement: exploring the areas off the path, trying but failing to climb in trees, and then running ahead like a madman and moaning at them to catch up. Harry loved that boy.

The rushing sound of waves hitting the shore preceded the view as they arrived at the beach. It was small, and sheltered because of the forest bordering it. Harry liked it because there were always people here, but it was never overcrowded. They laid down their towels next to a friendly local couple he'd had come to know as Gareth and Brenda, and Harry stripped off his T-shirt. He took a long moment to admire Ginny as she took off her clothes, revealing a green bikini underneath.

"Stop staring, you pervert," she said, looking back at him angrily. He knew for a fact, though, that she loved the attention. "Join me in the water?" she asked.

"In a minute," he replied. They kissed briefly and then she ran off to the sea.

Harry again took a moment to admire her, then he turned to Teddy, smirking as he saw the boy's red face, and his eyes trained firmly on Ginny's retreating form. He tried to come up with something witty, but he figured his godson had already endured enough teasing for today.

"Wanna come swimming?" he asked, carefully schooling his expression as Teddy practically jumped at the sound of his voice.

"Um… Maybe later. I'll watch our stuff for you. Make sure no one nicks it, y'know?"

"Alright then, thanks. See you in a minute," he said, secretly impressed with his excuse. Remus would have been proud of his son.

He ambled to the sea, and found Ginny standing to her waist in the water.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"The fucking water's fucking freezing, that's what's wrong!" she shrieked, shooting a contrite look to a nearby mother swimming with her two small children.

Harry eventually coaxed her further into the sea, and he spent the time lazily floating in the water as Ginny, ever athletic, swam circles around him. Eventually he pulled her close and laid her on his chest as he drifted along on his back.

"Did you see Teddy's face?" she asked.

"Yeah," Harry chuckled. "You've got a secret admirer, Gin."

"That poor boy," she said. "How long d'you think it'll take him before he can hold a conversation with me again?"

"Give it a few months," he said. "By the time he's back for Christmas, he'll have forgotten about you. Too many girls in Hogwarts."

"That, or we'll have a very awkward Christmas. Maybe he'll give me a lovely romantic present, you know."

"If he does, I definitely totally wasn't the one who gave him extensive advice on that a while back." They laughed, making Ginny's head bob up and down on his chest.

"Maybe I should do the old 'protective boyfriend' on him," he said.

"Oh God, that poor boy," Ginny laughed. He chortled, setting her off again when her head jumped up and down on his chest.

"I love you," she said after they'd calmed down again. "I know we've only been together for a few months now, but they've been the best of my life. I don't want this to end."

"It doesn't have to," he said, taking her hand in his and bringing it up to his lips to kiss it. It tasted salty. "I was afraid at first that we'd end up just like before, you know, with my stupid obsession with work driving us apart. But we're older now, and we've learned." Neither of them took their eyes off the heavenly blue sky as they floated on the water. "And you're right, the past few months have been amazing. I'm happier than ever before, and it's all because of you, Ginny. I love you."

She sighed contently, but then started shivering.

"Wanna go back?"

"Yeah."

"I don't think sunbathing without bikini is happening today," she said as they started swimming back.

"You'd make my godson the happiest boy in the world if you did that."

"And what about his godfather?"

Harry only grinned at her in response.

"I'd better not, though. I actually want to hold conversations with Teddy in the coming years."

"Can I put naked sunbathing on the calendar, though?" he asked hopefully.

"With or without Teddy?" she asked. "More importantly, does it involve a naked Harry as well?"

"Hmm, let's see…" he said, lowering his volume a bit as they swam by the mother and children again. "Definitely not, and definitely yes. In fact, Gin, how on did you guess what I was planning for us tomorrow?"

"It's a gift."

"Yeah, it is," Harry said. "But don't worry, it's not the only one you'll get tomorrow."

"Mm, I'll look forward to it."

"The present or the sunbathing?"

She simply smiled in reply.

* * *

Monday morning, Harry arrived at the office with his head feeling heavier than normal. Apart from the normal Monday morning blues, it was especially because of the Weasley family dinner last night that had gotten a bit out of hand. It was already a raucous affair, and Ginny's birthday was lavishly celebrated with a feast for the ages. And when Ron and Hermione announced hand in hand that they were expecting a baby, Molly and Arthur Weasley burst into ecstatic happiness. They went through several bottles of Arthur's personal stash of Elven Wine that night (strictly water for Hermione). Rather than going home again after dinner, Harry and Ginny decided to stay there for the evening, along with George, Angelina, Bill and Fleur. It was long past midnight when they went home again, but looking back on it, Harry was happy that they'd stayed. It'd been the perfect end to a perfect weekend.

Little did they know that while they partied and toasted to birthdays and new life, unspeakable acts had been carried out in a small shop along Diagon Alley.

After his usual routine of sorting out his mail and some other errant tasks, Harry exited the Auror office again and made his way to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. It was a rather oppressive name for such an office, and as he knocked on Hermione Granger's office door, he wondered how her plans to change said name were coming along.

"Come in!"

He pushed open the door. "Morning, Ms Granger," he said.

"Morning, Harry, close the door please."

"You look far too awake, you know."

"I had no alcohol, remember?" she said primly. "Why does everyone insist on getting drunk just when I can't join in anymore?"

"Hey, don't be so put out, we did it in your and Ron's honour!"

"It's much appreciated, Harry. Thank you," she said without any sincerity. "D'you want to get on with it?"

"We really should, shouldn't we? So what did you find out about house-elf conflicts?"

"A lot," she said. "I've had nothing at all to do this weekend, because Ron insisted on doing everything for me."

"Why do you sound angry at that? That sounds like paradise!"

"Yes, well, I'm not a fragile doll, am I? I could do with less pampering, if you ask me."

"So, house-elves?" Harry asked, on second thought deciding to keep her and Ron's squabbles out of the way.

"Yes, I read through the house-elf archives and included as many appropriate search terms as possible, so 'murder,' 'revenge,' 'feud,' and so on. Here's the list of pages I thought relevant."

She grabbed a pile of copied texts, labelled with differently coloured tabs, from one of her drawers and unceremoniously slammed it down on her desk. "I've skimmed through a lot of this. I couldn't tell what would be useful for you, since you wouldn't tell me anything about the circumstances"—Harry felt a twinge of guilt at her reproachful tone—"but the most interesting thing I had to conclude from this is that not a single one of these instances of elf-on-elf violence has gone unsolved."

"How so?"

"It's because of who they are, what kind of beings they are," she said passionately. "House-elves only live to serve their cause, so they only murder when they deem it absolutely necessary. They don't feel remorse for it, either, because they feel that they served their cause."

"Their master, you mean?"

"No, not necessarily. Who do you think Dobby served?"

"Me?"

"No!" she exclaimed. "He served what he felt was right."

"Which was me."

Hermione closed her eyes and visibly breathed out her irritation. Then she continued at a calmer rate. "You're right that most elves serve only their master. But there are exceptions, and I will not deliberately close my eyes for those groups of elves just to make my job easier. Anyway, the fact remains that an elf cannot, and will not, keep it hidden if they have harmed someone else. They will either tell their master, or they'll tell a person they look up to, because they saw it as just another necessary task."

"That sounds scary," he commented. "You could have an army of elves who'd all be doing your bidding without any remorse."

"Now you're beginning to see why it is so important to understand elves, and make sure they're not treated like slaves anymore," she said with a sad smile. "Was this useful for you, by the way?"

"Yes, it was, actually," he said. "Hang on, let me write this down quickly… done. Right, thank you so much, Hermione, you've been a great help."

"I just wish I knew what I'm helping with," she said.

"You don't."

"Okay then, that's not foreboding at all," she said, standing up to lead him out of her office again. "I'll see you later. Don't get in any trouble, please."

"Bye, Hermione."

* * *

He quickly went back to the Auror office and called Claire, Proudfoot and Ron into his office.

"I've got some developments to share with you," he announced as he closed the door behind him. "I've had a word with Hermione Granger, from the Department of –"

"Skip the name, please," Proudfoot interjected.

"Thank you. She's done some research into conflicts between house-elves over the weekend. Her conclusion was that elves can't keep these conflicts secret. They'll always tell their master if they've killed another elf."

"How so?" Claire asked.

"You're free to ask her during your lunch break, it's a long story," Harry said. "Now, this is important for our case, because it rules out the possibility of a fight between house-elves. They would have told the Headmistress otherwise."

"So this narrows the possible killer down to either a professor, or an intruder," Proudfoot said. "That's…"

"Something," Harry said before he could add a negative spin to it. "Baby steps, Aurors. If it wasn't an intruder, we'll have permission to use Veritaserum on the professors in no time. If it _was_ an intruder, they _will_ have left tracks somewhere, and we _will_ find them. All we have to do now is wait for the coroner's report –"

He stopped mid-sentence when someone knocked on his door.

"Come in," he called, after casting a masking charm on the case files on his desk.

Suzie opened the door and stuck her head around the corner. "You're needed at Diagon Alley," she said. "Ollivander's been murdered."


	5. Chapter 4

Harry made his way through the amassed crowd, he and his crimson robes drawing considerable attention, and he passed through the semipermeable Shield Charm around the famous Diagon Alley wand shop. He entered the building with Ron, Proudfoot, and another rookie he had decided to introduce to fieldwork, Vera Livermore. The Diagon Alley security guard nodded at them and pointed them up the rickety stairs behind the counter that lead to the back room of the shop. He stepped through the doorway, and muttered a curse when he saw the scene that greeted them. The Aurors behind him had similar reactions.

Ollivander was bound to a wooden chair in the middle of the small living area. His eyes were wide open with shock, a sign that he was murdered with the Killing Curse. His fingers were bent and broken like twigs, his hands were purple and bloated from the tightly bound rope tying his wrists to the armrests. And there were countless stab wounds and scorch marks on every part of his body. The poker lay next to the still-glowing hearth; its bent and bloodied tip had burned a hole in the carpet underneath.

He stood there for a moment, both to allow the shock of the horrible violence to pass, and granting a moment of respect to the ancient wandmaker.

"Fucking Christ," Proudfoot eventually said, summing up all their thoughts.

"Right," Harry said. "Let's keep focused on the task at hand. It's the least we can do for the man." He looked around to see if he had his colleagues' attention, then he continued. "So, what we can see is Ollivander was bound to the chair, he was tortured, and he was killed with most likely a Killing Curse. The order of those things seems obvious, but we have to be sure first. That'll be up for the coroner, I think. Weasley, Proudfoot, can you go through the downstairs area? Look for signs of break-in, struggle, footprints, anything like that. Livermore, you and me are going to take this room. Everyone okay with that? Good, let's get to work."

Ron and Proudfoot shuffled out the room, leaving Harry, the rookie, and the corpse behind. He was glad to see that she remembered her training correctly, and with almost no instruction she went to examine the poker for fingerprints and magical traces. That left Harry to inspect the room as a whole, as he looked around for any oddities. For a while, they were engrossed in their task and didn't say a word to each other.

"You might be wondering why I brought you here," he eventually said to her as he examined the slightly worn, dark green bed sheets. "I always bring new Aurors with me on fieldwork if I can. It's something you need to have experienced fairly quickly, I think. And this allows you to at least have a bit of guidance with your first scene, rather than just being chucked into it after a year or so, once you've forgotten half your training already."

"Yeah, Auror Johnson told me something like that," she replied, casting a series of revealing charms on the hole in the carpet to no avail. "Thank you for trusting me with this case, though."

"Yeah, this is a big one," Harry said absently. "It's alright, by the way. Your reports have been excellent, and I think you've slotted right into the office already. Did you find anything noteworthy yet?"

"No," she said. "There's not a single magical trace or fingerprint on the poker nor the hearth. Whoever did this knew what they were doing."

"That's worrying," he said. "Here, come take a look at the body." She stood up and moved next to him in the centre of the room.

"Now, I want you to describe to me what you see. Take your time, and be thorough."

"I thought I was done with training?" she said, giving him a brief smile. Harry tried to return it, but he found no humour in him in this moment.

"Hmm," she said, brushing her wavy black hair behind her ears. "He was killed with a Killing Curse, because he looks like he was literally scared to death." She looked at him for confirmation, and he motioned her to go on. "The knots are interesting, because there's no magical trace on them. The killer bound his arms, legs, and torso to the chair by hand."

"And what does that mean, do you think?"

"It means that they know how to handle a rope?"

"That's a given," he said. "No, I think the more important conclusion is that the killer, or perhaps the killers, had more than enough time for their act, and it means that they didn't have any resistance while binding him."

"Maybe they stunned Ollivander?"

"That's a possibility. Here, look at the bedsheets. They're crumpled, and the pillow is skewed and quite far to the edge of the mattress. Now, Ollivander was found this morning just after normal opening hours, when people noticed the shop hadn't opened. It can't have happened before the evening meal last night, because there's an unwashed plate with… whatever he's been eating in the sink, and it's quite dry already."

"So he ate dinner at least."

"Exactly. So I think, looking at the bedsheets, the killer snuck in at night, dragged him out of the bed, possibly stunned him in the process, and then bound him to this chair here."

"To torture him?"

"That's the question. His watch, tableware, and all other valuables are still here. So why did they do this? Was it for information? Revenge? Or was this person simply insane and just likes killing?"

They stared at the body for a moment.

"Whatever the reason, our killer was thorough," Livermore said.

"Exactly. Look at his lap, in the folds of his pyjamas."

She approached the body hesitatingly.

"It's a wand, I think," she said.

"Can you levitate it?" he asked, figuring this would be a good learning experience for her.

She took out her wand and carefully levitated it for them to inspect it. It was a plain looking wand, but it was broken in half. Only a few threads held the thing together, and the bottom half dangled uselessly as she held the stick close to their eyes for inspection.

"Go ahead and put it in the bag," he told her.

"What d'you reckon this means?" she asked after stashing the remains of the wand away.

"Anger, maybe?" Harry mused. "Perhaps the killer wanted to send a message."

"What kind of message?"

"I haven't got a clue," he lied. It was times like these that the Elder Wand strapped to his arm felt heavier than a simple wooden stick should.

To take his mind off it, he circled around the body of the old wandmaker to take stock of the many burn marks. His attention fell to the old man's rear and the torn cloth around that area. Livermore must've picked up his horrified look, as she made her way over to see for herself.

"Christ," she said, after a moment of stunned silence.

"I think we're done here for now," he said. "Do you have the samples?"

"Right here," she said, showing him a duffel bag filled with vials and bags.

"Good work. Shrink it, and keep them in the pocket of your coat. I'll grab the poker and then we'll go downstairs to ask what they found there."

They walked back down the stairs. He could still see the crowds outside the shop. The murder of the oldest wandmaker in the land, the man who gave every witch and wizard their first wand, was certainly going to draw attention. He saw the people's confusion, shock, and sadness, and felt himself getting a bit emotional as well. The man was an integral part of the Wizarding world. He was one of the faces of that magical day when Harry first set foot in Diagon Alley with Hagrid when we was still a boy. And now the man was dead, and his body unspeakably violated.

He swallowed the emotion for now and grabbed Ron and Proudfoot's attention.

"Not a single footprint," Proudfoot informed him. "We checked every square metre of this floor, and nothing."

"Took us a long time to find out how he entered, as well," Ron said.

"Yes, because you figured the killer couldn't have possibly used the front door," Proudfoot bit out.

"So you're saying…" Harry said.

"… They just walked straight in," Ron said. "Simple _Alohomora_ and they were in. Didn't expect that."

"So are you two done here?" Harry asked, hoping to avert further comments from an obviously irritated Proudfoot.

"Yeah."

"Then let's go back to the office. Livermore, this part wasn't in your training, so pay attention. When we walk out that door, we're going to get bombarded with questions, accusations and all sorts of shouting. It's chaos, but it's important that you show as little emotion as you can. Hold your head up high, shoulders straight, and stay right behind me. Do you think you can do that?"

She peered through the shop display for a moment, adjusted her pose, and then nodded at him.

And it was a cacophony. The crowd noises were slightly muffled when they were still inside the magical barrier, but that was over as soon as they stepped through. Worried people, curious passers-by and frenzied journalists piled up around them and made it nearly impossible for them to walk through.

"Mr Potter, is it true that Ollivander has been murdered?"

"How could this have happened?"

"Was this a burglary?"

"Mr Potter, is Diagon Alley still safe?"

"No comment!" he roared to no one in particular, keeping his eyes slightly above their heads. "You'll get a full statement from us later today. Until then, no comment! Now let us through!"

They wormed their way forward and eventually made it through. Several people made to follow them down the street, but Harry surreptitiously cast a repelling charm around them, harsh enough for them to back off, but soft enough to not heighten the already edgy mood in the shopping centre. Once they were safely away from other people, they ducked into an alleyway and Apparated back to the Ministry.

* * *

A quick lunch was the only pause Harry had that day. The Aurors were deeply shaken by the gruesome murder of Ollivander, and Harry was glad to see that everyone worked as hard as they could to have as much information available on the public statement he'd have to give later that afternoon. As the hour approached five, and there were still a lot of interviews being conducted, he ducked into his office quickly and sent a small note to Ginny, telling her that he would be eating at the office that evening. He caught himself wanting to mention to her his worries about the broken wand in Ollivander's lap, and how he was afraid it had something to do with the Elder Wand. He sent the note, sans that bit, reminding himself that he really should tell her about the wand someday.

Almost an hour later he pulled the Aurors around the table for a discussion on their findings. The burgers they'd ordered arrived halfway through the meeting.

"Not many people came through the Leaky Cauldron that night," said Aamir Ghezzal, one of the newer Aurors, his mouth filled with burger and chips. He swallowed. "Tom gave me a list here of people who ordered something, but he said there were a couple who just walked straight through. One of which was a bloke with a robe and a hood on. Tom couldn't see his face, he said."

Harry's thoughts immediately sprang to Yaxley, but he caught Ron's warning gaze, and kept it to himself.

"That's normal apparel for a lot of people, though," Proudfoot interjected. "If we're going to discriminate based on who wears a hood or not here we'll open up a whole can of worms."

"I'm not discriminating," Ghezzal retorted. "I just think it's pretty suspicious if you come through the Leaky in the middle of the night, don't say a word to anyone, and hide your face from everyone the entire time."

"Livermore, Johnson, Weasley, you three interviewed the shopkeepers," Harry said. "Did anyone there talk about a hooded figure as well?"

The three leafed through their notes quickly.

"No, I've got none. They were all asleep most of the night anyway," Ron said.

"Nothing here either," Livermore said.

"I've got one," Johnson announced. She ducked her head as she suddenly had the attention of the entire table. "Erm, one goblin teller did remember seeing a hooded figure come out of a shop and walk down the street. He said he didn't see which shop, though, just that it was on the opposite side of Ollivander's."

"Hmm. So if the goblin was right, then one of the shopkeepers on that side of the street isn't telling the truth." Harry mused.

"Are we sure the goblin is right, then?" Ron asked.

"They remember every knut you spent. Their memory is far better than ours," Proudfoot said.

"But we don't know which shop it was," Harry said, feeling his irritation flare up. "So to sum it up: the magical trace we found on the door was muffled. There were no footprints, no fingerprints, no witnesses, and the only blood we found was Ollivander's. We don't know when he died and we don't know why he died. All we know is that he was tortured with a poker and a knife, killed with a Curse of Death and that it wasn't a regular burglary. Also, there was a hooded man. Do you honestly think I can go out to that reporter waiting in the corridor and say this to her with a straight face?"

"Mate, we're trying our best here," Ron said.

"Well it's not good enough, is it?" Harry bit out. He sighed. "Johnson, at what time did the goblin see that man?"

"Three minutes and thirty-six seconds past ten."

"Fucking goblins," Proudfoot muttered.

"Why should it be a man, anyway?" Livermore said. "It could have just as well been a woman."

"I asked Tom about that," Ghezzal said. "He said he didn't think it was a woman, because he didn't have boobs."

"But you don't really see those under a robe, unless they're massive," Ron argued.

"You can trust Ron on that one," Proudfoot said.

"Mine aren't that big, though, and you can still see those when I'm wearing robes," Livermore said.

"Focus, people, please!" Harry interrupted. "Right now, we have the choice of either saying we don't have any suspect whatsoever, or we can say that we're looking for a hooded man. I'd like your opinions on which is less alarming."

"Hooded man, definitely," Ghezzal said.

"But what if the man didn't do it? You'd start a witch hunt against an innocent man, purely because he wore a hood!" Proudfoot protested.

"Or woman," Livermore added.

"We don't know their identity anyway, so this won't start a witch hunt," Harry said. "Everyone in favour of including the hooded figure?"

Only Proudfoot didn't raise his hand.

"Alright then, finish your meal, clean this up, sort those files, and then you can go home. I'm off to Madame Bones and then that reporter. See you all tomorrow."

* * *

"I'm home!" he announced after he closed the door behind him. He didn't get a reply, though, as he flicked his wand at the door. No one had come through the Fidelius Charm. Hermione had cast that Detection Charm for them after he found out two months ago that he forgot to key his ex-girlfriend, Julie, out of the wards. Although he couldn't trust her one bit anymore, he assumed that she hadn't used the opportunity to sneak around his house. Not that he had any way of finding out.

Ginny still hadn't shown up to greet him. Curious, but dead on his feet, he kicked off his shoes, hung up his jacket and walked into the living room. Ginny wasn't here, but the fire was still smouldering. There was a note on the table.

" _I saw your note. Thanks for the warning, I'm spending the evening with Ophelia and Stephanie. Love you!"_

The closing words cut straight through his weariness and he cracked the first smile since he was called up to Diagon Alley. His relationship with Ginny had moved so quickly the past summer, and these little things still brought him up short from time to time. He didn't know why it went so fast, either. Maybe the fact that they'd been together for a few years in the past helped, since they knew each other so well already. Whatever the case, it was at moments like these where little signs of affection surprised him in the best way.

He didn't throw the note away, but put it in the pocket of his jeans. Then he went up to the attic to try out the Elder Wand again.

He flicked on the lights and ignored the groaning and creaking of the roof in the wind as he pulled out the wand strapped to his left arm.

" _Wingardium Leviosa,"_ he called, pointing the wand at the stack of cardboard boxes. But again, nothing happened. He switched to his normal wand and tried it again, and just like last time, that worked just fine. Irritated, he banished the boxes to the other side of the attic. He grabbed the Elder Wand again, and this time his eye fell on a doll that was staring at him from one of the shelves to his left.

" _Accio!"_

The doll didn't move.

" _Levicorpus!"_

Again, nothing. The doll, modelled after a small boy, still sat on its shelf, staring at him with its beady eyes. He groaned in frustration. Why was it not working? The wand didn't feel dead, far from it. He felt the power emanating from it, even as it was strapped to his arm. And when he held it in his hand, he felt the connection, the feeling that this wand recognised him as its master. So why didn't it work?

Before he gave up entirely for today, he tested out his holly wand one last time. He gathered some layers of dust in the air, and swerved the cloud in a whirlwind around the dark attic, eventually banishing it out of the small garret window.

He tried to hold onto that faint, almost electric feeling as he turned the lights off and went downstairs again.

* * *

That night, it happened again. His dreams were chaotic, restless, yet he couldn't remember much of them, up until the point where he woke up in the forest again. The trees surrounded him once more, silent in their judgement, and Harry could do nothing but wander around aimlessly among them. He was plagued by the feeling that he was being watched from beyond the shadows and the thick, grey fog. He heard a rasping breath behind him, to his left, then to his right, and from time to time he caught a glimpse of a dark figure running alongside him. He wanted to get out of this place, but he couldn't. And the longer he ran, the longer he was convinced that his legs wouldn't allow him to stop. He trampled moss, leaves and bushes as he stampeded away from whatever was following him. But then his foot got stuck behind something, and he tumbled down a rocky hillside, landing in a small glade. Panicked, he turned over to look behind him as the breathing got closer and closer. The fog swirled all around him and condensed into a looming figure coming at him at breakneck speed.

And then it burst out of the mist. It screamed in fury and spread its arms to catch him as it dove towards him…

And then it was gone again. Only the screaming still echoed in the forest and his head. Whatever it was, it had disappeared just as soon as it'd appeared.

Harry sat up and tried to settle his fluttering heart, but then he heard another sound behind him. It was that slithering again, and Harry remembered the odd creature at the end of his previous nightmare. He slowly turned around to see the crawling thing appear from behind the thick, dark trees. It saw him through its filthy locks of hair and increased its frantic pace as it crept through the ferns with shaky limbs. Now face-to-face with the thing, instead of looking down on it like last time, Harry could see the face a bit better. He saw the scars, the smudges of mud, and the feral brown eyes. Those eyes… They drew him in, reminded him of something. He leaned forward towards the approaching creature as he tried to remember what it reminded him of. Of Hogwarts, the Order of the Phoenix, the Battle of Hogwarts. Of a sunny beach, with him and Ginny swimming back to shore to join Teddy…

Harry stared at the creature. They were nose-to-nose now, and Harry swore he could smell the scent of rot, decay, and abandonment.

Those eyes. That scarred face…

"Remus?"

* * *

He veered up in his bed. Shocked beyond words, he stared into the dark end of the bedroom as his thoughts raced in countless directions. His distress woke Ginny up this time.

"Whuz wrong?" she mumbled.

"Nothing, love. Just a bad dream," he whispered.

She mumbled another thing and closed her eyes again.

Harry laid his head on the pillow. As he stared at the ceiling, he kept replaying the dream in his head, over and over again. What was that figure? And was the monster crawling over the forest floor really Remus? Or had he just imagined it?

Sleep didn't come easily the rest of the night.

* * *

"How bad is it?" he asked the next morning.

"Oh, it's juicy," Ginny said from behind the Daily Prophet. "Hmm, let's see. _"Ollivander brutally murdered in suspected burglary"_ and _"Mysterious hooded man is the culprit? Aurors are clueless!"_ "

"They're not wrong," Harry said.

"Oh, and also, Harry," she said, putting the paper down on the dinner table, her expression unreadable. "I didn't know you were such a pervert. I'm very disappointed in you."

"What? What are you talking about?"

She pushed the paper towards him. "Hiring pretty young recruits now, are you? Am I not good enough for you, is that it?"

Nervously, Harry skimmed through the article until he found what she was referring to.

" _Sexual harassment rampant in Harry Potter's office?"_ he read out loud. _"It hasn't gone unnoticed that of the new Auror recruits, all of them are female. Is this sexism, or is Mr Potter abusing his position of power to fulfil his salacious fantasies?"_ He stared at Ginny in disbelief, who burst out laughing. "Is this the _Prophet_ or _Witch Weekly_?"

"You should've seen your face!" she cried.

"They're right though," he began. "But–"

"Oh, so it's true then?" Ginny said before he could continue.

"Shit, I could never have kept it hidden from you," he wailed. "It's true! I'm that kind of boss!"

"Mm, we can do some role-playing, you know," she said, waggling her eyebrows.

"I just might," he said suggestively. "No, but to be honest with you, there are actual reasons why all the new rookies are girls. Last batch of rookies were all blokes, save for one, and also it just so happens that these girls were all perfectly qualified and ready for the step up. I just don't understand why people make such a fuss about it here. The office is pretty much fifty-fifty on men and women anyway."

"They just need to pick their targets better," Ginny said as she stood up to get the boiling kettle. "Sure, it's all fine with the Aurors, but the Wizengamot is almost all male. Hey, even the Hit Wizards office is a sausage fest, so there's definitely work to be done still."

"Yeah, but why me, y'know?" Harry lamented.

"You know why."

"Also," he said. "Why haven't I heard anything about the Harpies? You're an all women team, that shouldn't be allowed either!"

"Maybe not, but everyone loves us, so it's okay," Ginny said smugly. She put down a mug of tea for the two of them. "Besides, outside of us, Quidditch is such a male dominated sport. It's kind of a reaction to that."

"Yeah, that's a good point. Thanks for the tea, love."

A small pause.

"Hey, Ginny?"

"Hmm?"

"I want to go shopping for school things with Teddy Monday next week. D'you wanna come with us?"

"Oh, I'd love to!" she said. Her radiant smile sent a fluttery feeling down in stomach. "Oh, but wait. I don't know if I can, though. Why'd you plan it on Monday? Did you ask for a free day?"

"Only from after lunch." He hesitated. "And I maybe have to work overtime for a couple nights to make up for it."

"Oh, Harry."

"I just don't like the rush of Diagon Alley on the weekend," he said defensively. "Especially when school's about to start again!"

"I kind of like it, actually," Ginny said. "Reminds me a bit of the good old days."

"Yeah, I can imagine. Hey, remember Lockhart in the book shop?"

"How could I not? Mum was so in love!" Ginny said, grinning widely.

"So was Hermione," Harry laughed. "She still won't admit it to us."

A small pause.

"So, overtime," Ginny said. The disappointment in her voice was clear, and her smile vanished like snow in the sunlight.

"It's just two nights because of Teddy's school shopping, Ginny," he said. "I promise you, I won't make it normal anymore."

"You'd better not," she said. "We talked about this, remember?"

"Oh yeah, vividly," he said emphatically. Another pause. "I might have planned a pub night with Ron and some other Aurors, though," he added.

"But that's fine," she said. "Look, Harry, it's your obsession with work that got between us last time, not your social life. That's why we said no overtime."

He folded up the newspaper so that he could stop staring at himself on the cover.

"Harry." He looked up when she gently touched his cheek. "I know it's a fine line we drew with that, but I need you to understand that I don't want to be that girlfriend who stands between you and your social life. I don't want to keep you from doing things you want to do."

"But I want to do you," he said.

They stared at each other for a long moment, and then they burst out laughing.

"When did you get so good with words?" she asked.

"I always have been," he said. He stood up, gave her a kiss, then he went to grab his jacket. "You just haven't appreciated my art until now."

"Mm, I'm sure. Do you have to go now?"

"Yeah, sorry. Baddies to catch."

"I thought you said you wanted to do me?"

"Oh, but I do," he said. "Just you wait, Gin. The moment I step into this house tonight, I'm going to drag you up those stairs and you and I are going to try out that boss roleplaying."

"I'll look forward to it," she said seriously. "Who gets to be the boss?"

"Why, me, of course!"

"Don't be too sure of yourself, Potter!"

He blew a kiss to her in response before he Apparated into work.


	6. Chapter 5

"Right, everyone, can I have your attention?" he called, gathering the Aurors around the front of the office.

"Thank you! Now, with the murder of Ollivander, we have a lot of work to do. If we all do our work as best as we can, and we work together like the team we are, then it's all going to go fine. Understood? Good! Now, there's several things to be done: we need to interview all the shopkeepers on the south side of Diagon Alley again, this time with more focus on the hooded man walking around at night, because it appears that one of them was lying to us about that. Auror Proudfoot, that's going to be your job. Take Auror Ghezzal with you."

"D'you want us to go now?"

"Wait until I'm done here, then you're free to go. Alright, another task is to see what Ollivander's social life was like: who did he meet, who were his friends, acquaintances, et cetera. Auror Hammond?"

"Yes?" said Lizzie Hammond, a 26-year-old from Glasgow.

"You're in charge of that, together with Aurors Johnson and Livermore. The rest of you can go back to work on other outstanding cases. Any questions?"

Livermore raised her hand. "Do we have another deadline?"

"Do you see a reporter standing in the corridor?"

"No?" she asked quizzically.

"Good! Then no, we don't have a hard deadline. We'll let the development of the case decide the tempo from here on out. Is it clear for everyone now?" No one protested, so he sent them off to work. "Oh, and one last thing," he called. "The new Azkaban patrol schedules are on the board. We'll all have to stand in once or twice in the coming weeks. Should you need exemption for medical or personal reasons, please tell me as fast as you can. Thank you. Auror Weasley, my office, please!"

"What's the plan?" Ron asked when they entered Harry's office.

"Ollivander's case is being handled by five people now, which is plenty. So that leaves us free to get back to the murdered house-elf."

"Got any new developments, then?" Ron asked.

"Well, the coroner's report came in yesterday, for starters. We can go down to the morgue at St Mungo's for that. And after that, I want us to go back to Hogwarts, because we haven't interviewed the paintings yet. I completely forgot that they must've seen what happened as well, as long as they weren't sleeping."

"Wouldn't they have told Professor McGonagall in the meantime, then?"

"I don't know how that works, to be honest. So I think it's best to head there and see for ourselves."

"You're the boss. Erm, one question, though."

"Yeah?"

"Don't you think you're being a bit… schoolish?"

"What d'you mean?"

"Well, erm… with the big speeches every day, and the task dividing like that. You didn't do that before."

"Yeah, I know," Harry said, scratching his neck. "Let's go to the morgue."

"Right."

"I talked about this with Amelia last week," he told Ron as they walked down the corridor towards the elevator. "We're a really young team at the moment. Always were after Kingsley and I sort of purged the old guard out. But with that helicopter fight last summer we lost four experienced Aurors."

"Three," Ron corrected him as they stepped into the elevator with a pair of purple-robed lawyers.

"No, four." Ron looked at him quizzically. "Savage," he clarified.

"Ah, forgot about that prick. How d'you reckon he likes Azkaban?"

"Hates it there, last I heard," Harry said, feeling little sympathy for his ex-colleague. His attempt to murder him and Ginny were still too fresh on his mind. "So in their place we brought in Livermore, Johnson, White and Shelley. That's about a third of our office, all rookies. Amelia and I talked about this, and she suggested that I should adapt to that a bit more. So I'm now sort of taking them by the hand, you know. I'm explaining more things instead of just doing them. That's it. I reckon I'll stop doing it in a couple of weeks, unless something unusual happens again. They should be properly used to how the office functions during a big murder case by then."

By now they'd arrived at the ministerial Floos at the end of the central hall. They each stepped into their own hearth. Moments later they stumbled into the Floo room of St Mungo's magical hospital. Here, too, their red robes caught the interest of many, but they ignored the attention and marched past the reception and down the stairs, towards the morgue.

They were greeted in the darkened and impeccably sterile room by Robert Smith, the slightly unhinged coroner, and as soon as they entered the room, the man grabbed his wand from his small desk and waved the door shut behind them. It echoed through the large, nearly empty room. Only an ornate marble examination table stood in the centre of it.

"What can I do for you, gents?" he asked, standing up.

"Hey Robby, nice to see you too," Ron said.

"You're not here for me, so let's just get on with it, shall we?"

"Yes, excellent idea," Harry hastily said. "I received your message that you're done examining the house-elf we brought in last week."

"Ah, yes, the house-elf. Haven't done one of those in years. It's been good," Robert said, turning his back to them and opening a drawer of the filing cabinet behind his desk. "Here we are, Bilfy the house-elf." He pulled out a file and held it out for them. Harry took the hint first and crossed the room to take it. Robert then waved his wand at the far-end wall. A hatch opened, and the body of Bilfy floated out of the dark hole and onto the examination table.

"Right, so the elf was stabbed with a large knife," the coroner said as they gathered around the body. "Looking at the wounds here in the chest and throat, I'd say it's around twenty-five centimetres long, and eight-and-a-half centimetres wide at its widest point. The blade and the guard are both made of high-quality goblin steel."

"Goblin steel is hard to come by," Harry noted.

"Nah, you just gotta look in the right places. Here, look at this," Robert said, whipping out a pocket knife from his robes and holding it up to Harry's face. "Real goblin steel, cost me just as much as a regular knife."

"Should I ask where you got that from?" Harry asked, his eyes firmly trained on the blade close to him. Robert promptly drew it back, folded it up again and put it back in his pocket.

"So the stab wounds, as you can see, they're all at the front, and they're all the result of stabbing motions. No slicing anywhere, just two, three, four, five thrusts," he mimicked the movement above the body, just without a knife, "and that was it for the elf. No chance of survival, the lungs were punctured, windpipe was punctured, heart was cut in half. Some of the wounds went all the way through as well, see?" He lifted up the head with his wand to show them the back of the elf. Three slits could be seen in the scrawny neck and the back of the rib cage. They looked obscenely large against the tiny body.

"So the killer was standing in front of the elf when it happened then, and that must mean that he saw him before he died," Ron mused. "So why didn't he shout or alert the others, then?"

"Silencing Charm," Robert said. "And a powerful one as well. A normal elf could have dispelled it with time if they wanted, but I reckon this one didn't have the chance to do that if no one heard him."

"Did she lose a lot of blood quickly?" Harry asked.

"Oh yes, the arteries were completely sliced open in the neck, between the lungs and right below the heart. It must've been gushing out in rivers almost immediately," Robert said.

"But there were no footprints in the hallway," Harry said.

"They could've had repelling boots," Ron suggested.

"Oh, I have those," Robert said, pointing at his high black leather boots. "Work like a charm, they do."

"Do you _want_ us to suspect you, Robert?" Harry asked.

"Haven't you got anyone in sight yet, then?"

Ron said "no" at the same time as Harry said "Yaxley."

Robert looked from one Auror to the other, his eyes narrowed, but he didn't comment on it.

"So do you have anything else for us?" Harry asked after that tense silence. "Did that Silencing Spell leave any trace behind we can use?"

"No, nothing. It's completely obscured. I've tried both a _Priori Incantatem_ and a potion to determine the wand type, but neither worked."

"Interesting,"Harry said. "Alright then, that's all we need for the elf, thank you. How far are you with Ollivander?"

"Not that far," Robert said. "I've only done a scan for magical spells so far. He was hit by only one spell, and that was the Killing Curse. But the magical signature was obscured here as well."

"Could you trace the wand?"

"No, I couldn't. Awful lot of similarities, innit? Seems like a one-man rampage so far, if you ask me."

"Why don't you let us do the thinking, Robert. But thank you for all the information, you've been a great help. Oh, and remember: total secrecy."

"Yeah, it's alright, no one talks to me, anyway," the man said dismissively. Knowing they wouldn't get another word out of him, Harry and Ron left the room again. Both were sunk in their thoughts about the information they'd just gotten from Robert, and they walked through the Ministry corridors in silence. Only when they arrived at the Auror office did they speak up again.

"The obscured magical signature," Harry said as he sat down behind his desk. "That's a suspicious coincidence."

"It is when you put the two murders next to each other like that," Ron said. "But how often does it happen that we get a case where the magical signature of the crime is obscured? I reckon it's the majority of our murders. It's not that much of a coincidence."

"I dunno the exact number, but come on. Two murders, completely out of the blue in one of the most peaceful summers we've had in years, within five days of each other."

"Okay, but the similarities end there. Bilfy was stabbed with a knife, Ollivander was tortured first and then killed with a Killing Curse. The locations are completely different, and we know nothing about possible motives. I know you think it's Yaxley, Harry, but you're letting that feeling get in the way of what we're supposed to do as Aurors. We have to keep all options open until they're proven as impossible."

Harry sighed and rubbed his eyes. "You're right, Ron. But I just can't shake this feeling that Yaxley's behind all this." He stopped himself from mentioning the suspected meaning behind Ollivander's broken wand.

"Yeah, and you could definitely be right about that. But Amelia would have your skin if she found out you hunt for people without evidence to back it up."

"So we need more evidence. Let's have some lunch, and we'll go to Hogwarts and talk to the portraits after that."

"Alright. But just stay—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, Ron. Are you coming?"

His friend shrugged, then followed him to the canteen.

* * *

After requesting access, Harry and Ron Flooed into the headmistress' office.

"Welcome back, Aurors," Professor McGonagall said. "Mr Potter, if it's alright with you, I would like some of your time after you're finished with the portraits."

He and Ron exchanged a look. "Of course, Professor," he said. "I can stay here until four thirty. May I ask what it's about?"

"You may," she said. "I would like to discuss the security measures of this castle with you."

"You want Auror patrols?"

"Ideally, yes. But we'll talk about that later; you two have other things to do for now. At what time can I expect you here?"

"That depends on how cooperative the portraits are, Professor," Harry said with a tight smile.

"I'll assume the worst then," she said with a straight face.

"D'you know what?" Ron said to him some time later, as they strolled through the deserted corridors. "It's good to be back. I've missed Hogwarts."

"Yeah," Harry said. "Up the stairs here. I dunno, though. It was never the same after the Battle, was it. They patched it up well enough, but it hasn't got the same feeling to me anymore."

"I get what you mean, yeah," Ron said. They were silent after that until they arrived at the seventh floor.

"Well, here we are," Harry said. "D'you wanna start on the far end there?"

"Go ahead."

Harry turned to the nearest painting, which housed a man wearing the stiffest clothes he'd ever seen: a long black jacket that extended to his knees (and was quite strained around the belly), with equally black suit pants and well-polished shoes underneath. His head was adorned with a mess of grey curls, and his sideburns extended almost to his mouth. The man watched him intently with an air of haughtiness, and he looked horribly out of place in the oak forest he stood in.

"Good afternoon, sir," Harry said. "I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions."

"Good afternoon, young man. You may, but make haste, please. I am Colonel Thomas Johnes, Lord Lieutenant of Cardiganshire, and I am a busy man," he replied.

"Certainly," Harry said, wondering how busy a portrait could possibly be. "Erm, a house-elf was murdered in this corridor last night, do you remember that?"

"I do remember that, yes," the man said.

"Did you seen it happen?"

"I did not see it, no, it was quite dark that night, and, as I said, I am quite busy. I don't have time to stand around idly all this time. These acorns are not going to plant themselves."

"But did you hear something?"

"No. Hearing never was my forte, and I'm afraid it hasn't improved with the time."

"Oh, I heard it, alright," the adjacent painting said. Harry saw a red-haired woman wearing a strange hat, and with an ornate necklace around her bare neck and collar. "Barely any sound, but my God, it was awful. The splattering, and the sound of that elf gasping for breath." She put her hand on her chest and took a breath. "And old Thomas here didn't hear a thing, can you believe it?"

"Don't you see, woman? I was planting oak trees, for the good of the Empire!"

"Did you see who did it, then?" Harry asked excitedly, ignoring the ramblings of the man.

"I saw merely a glimpse," the man said. "As I recall, it was a lady, rather tall and sturdy."

"Could you describe her some more?"

"You seem rather zealous, young man. That is good, our country needs more of the likes of you. But no, I'm afraid I only saw her long, fair hair. She wore regular robes, too."

"I thought the hair was more grey," the woman added.

 _That could be Yaxley_ ,Harry thought.

"How certain are you that she was a woman?" he asked the two paintings, recalling the discussion between him and the other Aurors about the suspect in Ollivander's murder. "Did she have a feminine body?"

"I beg your pardon?" the man exclaimed. "I am a civilised, virtuous man. How dare you assume such carnal instincts from me?" And with that, he stalked out of his frame. Harry couldn't see him anymore, but the woman watched him leave with a hint of sadness in her eyes. She mouthed an apology to him, then went after the man.

* * *

Harry tried to rub the tiredness from his eyes as he and Ron once again ascended the staircase to the headmistress' office. The interrogation of the portraits had been a long and taxing task. They had finished on time, but he wasn't looking forward to his talk with McGonagall. Between this, his recurring nightmares and the stress about a killer in his godson's school, he rather wanted to go home and have a nap, preferably in Ginny's warm embrace. But the day was almost over, so he steeled himself for the last few hours and entered McGonagall's office with Ron, who went back to the Ministry after a short goodbye.

"Sit down, Harry," McGonagall instructed after the fireplace calmed down again. "You look dead on your feet."

"Yeah, the portraits weren't as cooperative as I'd hoped," Harry said, sinking down onto the wooden chair opposite the professor. He wished she'd kept some of Dumbledore's soft plush chairs.

"Talking to them is part of my daily routine, Mr Potter," she said.

"I don't envy you," he said, smiling tiredly. "Anyway, you wanted to discuss Auror patrols in Hogwarts?"

"Yes, I did. I don't know how far you've come with this case, or how close you are to catching whoever did it…"

"I wouldn't expect it to be done before the start of the semester, Professor."

"I was afraid that would be the case. Then I'm sure you agree that the security around the castle needs to be increased. The other professors and I discussed this yesterday, and we agreed that, ideally, we'd have five permanent Aurors stationed around the castle."

"That'll be difficult, Professor. The Auror office is stretched thin with this case, Ollivander's murder, and the usual tasks. I'm sorry."

He found it hard to deny her request. Being back here in Hogwarts, speaking to his former Professor and Head of House, it brought back memories of him as a student, and he had to actively remind himself that he was now one of the most important figures in the Ministry, and not a teenage boy being disciplined.

"That is disappointing," McGonagall said. Harry squirmed in his seat. "Are you sure about that?"

"I am, Professor, apologies. I'll discuss it with Madame Bones and the others tomorrow, but from the top of my head, I think two or three Aurors is the maximum we can miss."

McGonagall nodded and looked him in the eye as she considered something. "You've gotten rid of those foul Dementors long ago, luckily, but the added work that gives you and your Aurors must be difficult," she said.

"It is," he admitted. "To be honest with you, the whole ministry is waiting until the baby boom comes of age in four or five years. Until then, we're all sort of stretched beyond our limits."

"Yes, we've noticed that here as well. Classes have become larger and larger over the past few years, and the professors can barely handle the work that comes with that."

"And new professors don't grow on trees, do they?"

"They don't." She paused. "I'll take this chance to remind you of my offer, I suppose."

"And I'll have to decline again, Professor," Harry said, failing to smother a grin. "I feel at home in the Auror office, and I'm pretty sure I'll get dragged by my hair into the head office of the DMLE after Madame Bones retires."

"You don't sound too pleased with that."

"You know me, Professor," Harry said. "Trouble is part of my life. Can't see myself behind a desk all the time."

"Being a Hogwarts professor would suit you more then, wouldn't it?"

"I'm sorry," Harry repeated, still grinning.

"It was worth a try," she said ruefully. She glanced at the clock on the desk next to her. "Goodness, look at the time. I suppose you'll have to leave now?"

"Yeah, I do. I'll send a letter to you tomorrow or the next day about Auror patrols."

"I'll look forward to that," she said as she watched him walk to the fireplace. "Send my regards to Miss Weasley."

"I will, Professor."

* * *

He was dead on his feet by the time he got home. Ginny took pity on him and did the cooking while he took a short nap on the couch by the fireplace. But he startled awake forty minutes later, sweating and panting, tangled in the pillows as the black leather of the couch came into view inches from his nose.

"Harry?"

He swivelled around and his hand was on his wand already, only to find Ginny shaking his shoulder with a concerned look on her face.

"Ginny. You scared me," he breathed.

"Are you alright? You looked like you were having an awful dream," she said, looking at him worriedly.

"Yeah, sort of." He was still a bit disoriented after waking up so suddenly. His nightmare in the forest progressed further this time. Again he had had to run away from his invisible pursuer, and again he had tripped over a root. Then, Remus had appeared from behind he trees. Harry didn't know if it was just an illusion or not, but this time, he had looked less like an Inferius and more like the man he had once been. He had no clue as to what that could mean. Then he noticed Ginny was talking to him.

"Sorry, what?"

She shook her head. "Dinner's ready, so get up."

He stood up from the couch and stretched his limbs.

"Thanks for doing the cooking," he said, tucking in to the mashed potatoes and beans.

"'S alright, you looked knackered. You'll return the favour soon, though, won't you? Training's intensifying again."

"Of course, love."

"And a massage afterward?" she cheekily added.

"Happy ending included," he said, waggling his eyebrows.

She threw him a flirtatious smile that disappeared just as quickly. "D'you want to talk about that dream?"

Harry sighed tiredly. "I wake up in a forest," he began. "And it's really dark and misty, and I'm being chased by… well something or someone, I don't really know. So I run away, but it keeps chasing me and making these noises behind me. Then I trip over a root, roll down a hill, and the figure catches up with me, but then it disappears again." He took a sip of water, just then realising how parched he was. He emptied the whole glass before continuing. "Then something comes crawling towards me. It's like an Inferius, or a zombie."

"What's a zombie?"

"It's a Muggle… well… an Inferius, I guess."

"Then why did you say 'or'?" she asked. Harry threw her an exasperated look, and she sighed. "Alright, I'll ask later. So then what?"

He took a deep breath. "It approaches me, and I do the same. That's when I see who it is. But..." He hesitated.

"Who is it?"

"It's Remus," he said, meeting her shocked gaze. "I don't know why I dream about this, either, but it's always the same forest, and I always wake up as soon as Remus and I approach each other."

"You've dreamt this before?"

He nodded.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well, I woke up in the middle of the night before, and I didn't want to wake you up. And by the time I saw you again after work the next day I'd already forgotten about it."

Ginny swallowed a bite. "And your scar?"

He shook his head. "It has nothing to do with my scar. I haven't felt anything there since Voldemort died."

"That's a relief."

"Yeah," he snorted. "But that never really worried me, y'know? I can't see him jumping out of his grave now and announcing that he actually had _another_ trick up his sleeve. I can already see the headlines: _"Ere we go again, boys!"_ "

"I think _"Harry Potter is a deranged man again and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is definitely not back!"_ would far more likely, if you ask me," Ginny laughed. She sobered almost immediately when she noticed he didn't laugh with her. "We could make some Dreamless Sleep potion if you'd like," she said.

"Never liked those," he said. "I think it's just the stress getting to my head. I'll wait for it to pass, I think."

"I've given up trying to convince you otherwise," she said. "I'll make a batch, just in case."

"Thanks."

"Oh, also: I asked the fitness coach, but I can't come with you next Monday," she said, frowning.

"How angry was she for asking?" Harry asked, smirking.

" _Your schedule is vital for your flying abilities! You'll be here by eight and ready to train all day, if you know what's good for you!"_ she recounted, in an eerily accurate impersonation of her slightly dictatorial fitness coach.

"It was worth a shot. I'll send Teddy your regards, then."

"Don't tease him too much," Ginny warned.

"I'll give him all your love – ow!" he cried when Ginny kicked him in the shins. "Alright, got it!"

"Good," she said sweetly. "It's your turn to do the dishes, by the way."

"And what if I drag us upstairs first?"

"Then you'll do the dishes _after_ I've worn you out."

"You can't, I'm insatiable," he said.

"And we are definitely going to see if you're right," Ginny said. She held up a finger to stop him. " _After_ you've done the dishes."


	7. Chapter 6

Harry actually had a restful sleep that night, and he Flooed into work the next day feeling well rested. After he'd sorted out his inbox he quickly headed to the DMLE for his weekly meeting with Amelia. They normally had it on Monday mornings, but with Ollivander's murder two days before, they had rescheduled it for today.

"Sit down, Harry," the stern witch said. He sank into the leather chair across her, with her neatly-sorted desk separating them.

"What a week it's been, hasn't it?" she finally asked. "Two murder cases, one shocked the country, and the other one would have as well, had our Minister not kept it secret." She shook her head. "I'm getting too old for this."

That was usually the sign for her to start trying to convince Harry that he should take over her job. "I'm sorry, Amelia, but I can't quit my job now. Not with these murders still unsolved."

"Of course, and I wouldn't ask you to." She then looked at him shrewdly. "You didn't outright deny me this time, though."

Harry scratched his neck and looked around her tidy, marble office. "I've talked to Ron about it and he made me see it in a different light. I hadn't considered that I could take over for just a short while and then go back to the Aurors after a few years."

"Yes, you've always been a man of action," she said. "These are important times, Harry. You and the remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix have guided this institution through the years after the War, and you've done more work than I could have ever thought was possible. Laws have changed, offices and departments have been restructured, and I think we've finally come to a point where people can once again be proud to work at this Ministry. But the change wasn't the hardest part. That part comes now, Harry."

"Castlereagh's manifesto," he said, guessing where she was leading the conversation.

"Let me tell you a story about my niece, back when she was still a girl," Amelia said, still looking at him directly. Her wrinkles and grey hair hadn't reduced the sheer force of determination behind her eyes one bit. "She didn't have a good youth. Orphaned as a baby, and forced to grow up with me as her guardian. I have been called many things, but having a warm personality is not one of them."

Harry swallowed a sarcastic reply. Humour had never been her strong suit either.

"She was a volatile girl. She did poorly on tests and regularly missed deadlines. And from time to time, she'd wake up one day and decide that she was going to become a new person. How often have I seen such moods from her when she was with me during her summer holidays. She'd eat a quick breakfast, clean her room, sort out her school books and papers, go outside and train, meet up with friends, and when I called her in for dinner, she would be brimming with energy and determination." She paused, allowing the raising excitement in her voice to ebb away again. "She would keep at it for a week, at most. Then she'd be back to waking up past noon and postponing her homework to the last minute."

"She always did well on the final exams, though," he said.

"That's because she's a Bones," she said, straightening her back with pride. "But it's no different here, Harry. This Ministry has had a makeover and some laws have changed. Now it's a matter of making these changes permanent. If you don't, your work will have been for nothing, and by the time you retire, this institution will be back to where it was during Voldemort's time. You know the Wizengamot and its conservative allies are still strong and wealthy enough to make that happen."

"I know. And that's why I'm considering taking over your job after you've retired."

"It would be the right thing to do," she said. "I've lost almost my entire family to the racism and blood purity that reigned here, and so did you. You're the only person I can trust with this seat. I may not agree with some of the more underhanded tactics you and Kingsley use, but I know your heart is in the right place."

"Thank you," he said, hoping the sincerity behind his words had come across.

She allowed him a small nod. "Speaking of underhanded tactics, the Minister and I have had a meeting to discuss the murder cases."

"How'd it go?"

"You know how he and I get along," she said shortly.

Harry grinned. Kingsley's strong sense of righteousness sometimes clashed directly with Amelia's insistence on upholding the law. When that did happen, it always came down to a battle of willpower, one that Kingsley and his Gryffindor heart usually won.

"Kingsley insists that they need to be solved as soon as possible. The longer this continues, the more bolstered Castlereagh and his allies will become. And if words spreads about the murder at Hogwarts…" She didn't need to finish that sentence. They both knew that he and Kingsley would be hung out to dry if it did.

"We're doing the best we can," Harry said. "But the killer is smart and knows how to hide all traces. We might have a lead from the word of a goblin, though. He apparently saw a hooded man head into one of the shops across Ollivander's, and that clashes with the testimonies the shopkeepers have given us."

"Yes, I've heard. Your ex-girlfriend, Julie le Clé, is to be one of the interrogated shopkeepers, is she not?"

"Oh. Proudfoot hasn't told me that yet," Harry said, as a heavy feeling sunk into his stomach. "I think those are scheduled for today, though."

"Try to keep this case by the book," she said. "I trust you to do the right thing, but the consequences of a mistake are far too great for you to risk it."

"I'll try, Amelia. Thanks for your time, and I'll see you next week." He didn't miss her displeased look at his half-hearted promise, and he left her office quickly. On his way back to the Auror office he ran into Claire Johnson, who was on her way to the coffee bar.

"Morning, Johnson," he said pleasantly. She jumped at the sound of his voice.

"Morning," she said demurely. "I was just getting… coffee."

"I think I'll have one as well. I'll come with you, if you don't mind."

"Not at all," she said, though her body language told him exactly the opposite.

"So how are you holding up during these busy times? You haven't been tested like this since you started as an Auror."

"Fine, I guess."

"The attention from reporters and other people not bothering you?" As always with a big case, the corridor outside their office was regularly occupied by reporters, seeking to hear the latest developments.

"No, they've never really approached me." They reached the coffee bar by now, and they joined the queue of people dressed in the oddest of clothes. The man in front of him wore normal Muggle clothes, which would've been fine, were it not for the fact that the entire outfit was on the wrong way around. Harry was glad, in a sort of fond, nostalgic way, that this was one thing that never seemed to change in the Wizarding world.

"And how's Hammond treating you?" he asked, desperate to keep their conversation going. However awkward it was, the inevitable silence if they stopped talking would certainly be worse. "She can be the worst gossip sometimes, I hope that hasn't been bothering you."

"Oh, it's alright," she replied, smiling for the first time since he informed her she was accepted into the Auror office. "She's sort of found a perfect match in me with that."

He chuckled. "I'll keep that in mind, then." An idea struck him as they ordered their coffee. "By the way, from time to time we have a night at the local pub with some of the Aurors. I dunno if you've been to one of them already?" She shook her head. "Would you like to come, too? Hammond's often there as well."

"Of course!" she said.

"Great! I'll tell you when the next one is. It might take a while still – you know what it's like with those plans."

"Oh yeah, I'm still planning a reunion with some of my old classmates from Hogwarts," she said.

"For how long already?"

"At least a year," she said, the corners of her mouth twitching.

"Well, there you go," he said as they reached the office. "I'll catch you later." She gave him a brief smile in response and hurried back to her desk. Harry watched her leave for a moment, feeling like he had finally achieved his first breakthrough in making her feel more at home in the office. Hopefully, she would be back to her old, vivid self soon.

He then saw Proudfoot make his way towards him.

"Got a minute, Potter?"

"Sure, what is it?"

"Got the interviews with the shopkeepers done. The transcripts are on my desk. D'you want to go through them?"

"Good idea." He followed the veteran Auror to his desk, which sat in the furthest corner from from the entrance. Proudfoot was a kind person, but he had always been crystal clear about his need for privacy and solitude. That his corner was assigned as a permanent temporary storage area didn't bother the man. Harry grabbed a pallet, briefly wondering how on earth it got there, and transfigured it into a chair.

"So," Proudfoot said as they sat down. "We've managed to interview most of the shopkeepers. Most of 'em weren't too happy to be interrogated twice in such a short time, but they generally understood the need for it. Ollivander was well respected among them."

"Anything that stood out?" Harry asked, leafing through the stack of parchment.

"Couple things. Madame Malkin is quite ill, and told us that she fears her time in her shop is coming to an end. Her son is fifteen years old and still at Hogwarts. Seeing as his hobbies include Quidditch, brooms and dragons, she doesn't think he's particularly suited to take over the business."

"Shame, that. Still, plenty of other people who'd be quite willing to step in her place," Harry said, thinking of his old classmates Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown. "But let's stay focused."

"Right. Couple other things. First of all: the owner of the jewellery shop across from Magical Menagerie is a right bastard."

"Didn't like being interviewed?"

"Didn't like Ghezzal entering his shop. Got really angry until we reminded him who we were."

"Getting angry at Aurors." Harry shook his head. "Not the smartest type, then?"

"No, I just think his toes are too long for his own good. By the time he'd calmed down and we started asking him questions, he was back to normal. Although his temper flared up quite a lot when we asked him if he'd seen a hooded man. I've written it all down, if you want some light reading."

"Thanks."

"We noted his name. Might want to keep a close eye on him."

"Yeah, probably a good idea. What else?"

"Erm," he scratched his stubbly chin. "Ghezzal needs to lay off the burgers."

Harry stared at his colleague until he sighed and relented.

"Okay," he said. "Your ex apparently works at the second hand bookstore now."

"Julie? Yeah, Amelia told me. She owns that small store across Ollivander's now?"

"Yeah, she does. We talked to her, but she wasn't very forthcoming in telling us what she was up to." He sighed. "Sorry, boss, but she's quite suspicious, if you ask me. I don't know how you two broke up…"

"I caught her cheating on me," Harry replied shortly.

"Ah. No leftover feelings, then?"

Harry ran his hand through his hair. "No, not really. It wasn't going well between us anyway. Seeing her with that Hit Wizard just sealed the deal."

"A Hit Wizard?"

"Yes. And you won't mention this to anyone, won't you?" Harry asked in a tone that suggested it wasn't really a question. Proudfoot shrugged. "Anything else notable?"

"No, nothing more. It's just these two that stood out."

The pair of Aurors let that sink in for a moment in the quiet corner of the room.

"This is not good," Harry said. "We could bring them in for interrogation, but we'd have to file a request for Veritaserum first, and that takes ages to brew."

"It's not even foolproof."

"I know, but we can't do much else, can we?"

"Well, Hammond is working on finding Ollivander's relatives. Maybe she's got something."

"Right. I'll ask her, then. Could you file that Veritaserum request in the meantime?"

"Sure. Where can I find the form?"

"It's in the bottom left drawer I think. Or maybe somewhere in the middle, I'm not too sure."

Proudfoot shook his head. "I'm sorry, boss, but that reorganisation a couple months back was total wank."

"I'm starting to agree," Harry said, scratching behind his ear. "The cabinet's not that big, though, you'll find it eventually."

"I'll revert that Anti-Summoning Charm one day," Proudfoot announced, standing up.

"You're welcome to try," Harry said, grinning at the departing Auror. He stood up, reverted the chair's Transfiguration and placed the pallet back among the cluttered mess, and went over to Hammond's desk.

Sadly, it turned out that Ollivander was a total recluse. Perhaps it was a side effect of being the oldest man in Britain, but whatever the reason, it would be very hard, if not impossible, to find out whether the wandmaker had had a feud with someone that would have lead to the murder. They would have to wait for the Veritaserum and the coroner's report now, and there wasn't much else they could do in the meantime.

Contemplating this latest roadblock, Harry asked one of the passing Aurors for another cup of coffee and retreated to his office to think about what to do next. He supposed he could return to the house-elf case for now, but he knew he wouldn't be able to focus on it. Ollivander's murder was too omnipresent in his thoughts. He couldn't shake the way the old wandmaker's fingers had been broken in seemingly random directions, nor could he forget the moment Vera held up the broken wand for him to see. He _knew_ , just as certain as he had known that Draco Malfoy was a Death Eater, that it had something to do with the Elder Wand. But ideas eluded him.

 _That's new_ , he thought, as he grabbed the Azkaban patrol calendar again. His request to change his patrol time was granted. His round was originally scheduled for next Monday afternoon, but he was already going shopping with Teddy then. To his dismay, his patrol duty had merely been postponed by a few hours. Day patrols were horrible enough already, but night-time shifts literally took away the last gleams of light from the gruelling guard duty. Even though the Dementors had long been banished from the island, it was still a dreadful place. The sun never shone, and the walls had had enough curses and enchantments placed on them to last an eternity. Kingsley had proposed a new prison on the mainland as part of a plan to humanize the justice system, but he had been forced to rescind that idea before it could come to fruition. Incarceration was a loaded topic in the Wizarding world, especially after the mass arrests following the fall of Voldemort. It had been hard enough to convince the Wizengamot to banish the Dementors. That voting process had been the first time Harry had approved of bribes.

* * *

Thoughts of Azkaban hung over him like a dark cloud the rest of the week, as there were no new developments to keep his mind occupied elsewhere. The Ministry was out of fresh Veritaserum, so the Aurors had to wait for a new batch before they could begin the interrogations. It would take a full lunar phase before the potion was ready, to Harry's immense frustration. And to make matters worse, Robert the coroner came down with a flu. The case had come to a dead end. But at least they had the prospect of a breakthrough, and that was more than could be said about the house-elf case.

Ollivander's murder case slowly stopped being a daily front page matter, but tensions didn't abate. Lord Castlereagh had cleverly used the void in shock-worthy news to fill the Daily Prophet with personal interviews, as well as inviting his associates and other well-known members of society to a banquet. It was clear now that the man was aiming to challenge Kingsley's reign. Whether or not he would be successful was uncertain, but the public seemed to agree on one thing: Kingsley wasn't untouchable anymore.

As for Harry himself, his nightmares mercifully became less frequent. He dreamt of Remus and the forest one more time that week, on Friday night, but the nightmare seemed to have lost some of its edge. The dark and foggy woods became more familiar now, and the figure chasing him still couldn't harm him. Remus had transformed as well. He no longer looked like an Inferius just risen from the grave, and instead had turned into the man Harry remembered: tall and handsome, with a friendly and compassionate air despite his scarred and shabby look. He also didn't crawl anymore, but had the strength in him again to stand on his own feet as he and Harry approached each other. Yet still the man didn't say a word, and Harry woke up as soon as they met. Still, Ginny had commented on his good mood the next morning, which had been a welcome surprise.

Practice sessions with the Elder Wand had come to a halt. There was no progress whatsoever, and he was still stuck in the frustrating position of feeling the presence of the wand, but being unable to do anything with it. At one point he accidentally overpowered a spell out of frustration, sending a rocking horse spinning wildly through the attic. That was when he knew he needed to stop. He wasn't happy with it, but on the upside of things, it left him enough time to catch up on other things he'd been putting off. He actually went jogging on Saturday.

* * *

The next Monday, he went to the Ministry for a few hours to speak briefly with Amelia and sort out a few documents. He was halfway through a report on the Auror academy when it was time for lunch. He ate a quick sandwich with Ron and Hermione in the canteen, where they spent most of the time discussing their plans to move out of London to somewhere more spacious for the baby. He begged off more quickly than he normally would have, and Apparated to Pembrokeshire to retrieve Teddy. They drank a cup of tea with Andy, and then left quickly after saying goodbye to her ("You are not buying Teddy a new broom! His Nimbus 3000 is still good enough!"), Flooing into the Leaky Cauldron.

"Alright," he said to his godson, putting an arm around his small shoulder. "First stop is Gringotts, and I suggest we do a stop at Leopold Fortescue's after that to take a look at what you need to buy."

"Sure!" Teddy said a tad too loudly. He had a glint in his eye and his hair was sandy blond. Harry chuckled at his enthusiasm.

They crossed the shopping alley side by side, Harry marvelling at the magical scenes just as much as his godson as they walked past brimmed store fronts, stacks of books that couldn't realistically remain upright, street vendors selling things like caramelized apple pretzels and Spiralling Slushies, and the collection of owls and bats in front of the Magical Menagerie. Even though it was the time of year for school shopping trips, the Monday afternoon guaranteed them reasonably empty streets, and before they knew it, they were in front of Gringotts.

After a glare from a goblin, a muttered "follow me," and an underground roller coaster ride that Harry enjoyed considerably more than Teddy, they found themselves in front of his godson's vault. It had been set up by Harry and Andy, though the majority of the money came from Harry. He made sure Teddy didn't withdraw an absurd amount of galleons, and after a short stop at Harry's own vault, they went above ground again.

"So, what does your list look like?" he asked Teddy. They were seated at one of the tables in front of the ice cream parlour. Previously it was called Florean Fortescue's, but now it was named after the man's grandson, Leopold, after Florean had disappeared during the war. The quality of the ice cream had dipped a bit, but that wasn't saying much, considering how unforgettable Florean's work had been. Still, Leopold's ice cream brought all the kids to the parlour, parents alike, and Harry couldn't deny the good feeling of eating a chocolate fudge cornicle with his godson on a mid-summer afternoon.

"Well, it's all standard stuff, really," Teddy said, his lips surrounded with a dark brown sheen. "For books, I need _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 3_ ; _Intermediate Transfiguration;_ _The Rochester Bestiary_ –"

"Not _The Monster Book of Monsters_?"

"What's that?"

"Hagrid's idea of a good book," Harry said, grinning. "I'll show it to you, the charm still hasn't worn off."

"Cool! I also need _Spellman's Syllabary_ , and _The Essential Defence Against the Dark Arts_. Oh, we've got two books for Defence this year, and it also says we need _1798 Protective and Exceedingly Useful Hexes and Spells_."

"Really?" Harry asked, looking up in surprise.

"Yeah. I also need a new cauldron, cause my old one's too rusted."

"Alright," Harry said, still mulling over the school's decision to include such a practical book. He couldn't fault Professor McGonagall for it, and it didn't endanger the secrecy of the house-elf case. But it was clear that the Hogwarts professors had made work of the extra preparations following the murder. He put the matter aside for now. This afternoon was for his godson and him.

"You'll also need some new robes, though," he said.

"Ugh, really?"

"Yes, really. How much have you grown since last year?"

"Just over four inches," Teddy admitted.

"Exactly. You need robes and clothes that fit you, and I don't trust Andy to pick them out with you, so that's why you and I are buying those today."

"Why don't you trust her?"

"I had a bad experience when we first got to know each other," Harry said darkly.

"Really? But–"

"Look, do you want to look like a clown or not?"

"Of course not!"

"Good! Then we'll go to Madame Malkin's after we're done buying your regular things."

Teddy relented with a face that made it clear that he most certainly didn't agree with Harry's decision, and they set off after finishing their ice cream.

Diagon Alley, he concluded, looked perfectly normal, save for one store: Ollivander's. Through the drawn blinds he could see that it was completely dark inside. For some unknown reason, the goblins were reluctant to release the old man's will, and thus the fate of the store was still unknown.

The empty store remained a niggling thing at the back of his mind as he and Teddy worked through the school list. Every time they exited a store, his eyes were drawn to it, as if the storefront were a black hole in the otherwise ordinary shopping district.

As they exited the cauldron shop, he heard someone call his name. He looked at his side to see an older woman, barely up to his chest, looking up at him inquisitively.

"Mr Potter?"

He put his hand on Teddy's shoulder to prevent him from wandering off.

"Yes?"

"Mr Potter, I read the awful news about poor Ollivander last week," she began eagerly, "and I was terribly worried, so I wanted to ask you if you're any closer to catching whoever did this?"

Harry smiled at her through his annoyance. "Well, Ms…"

"Oh, Moritz, sir. Christa Moritz. So good to finally make your acquaintance!"

"Likewise," he lied. Teddy pulled on his sleeve as other people started to gather around their conversation. "Well, we're all working night and day to solve this crime, and we're genuinely on the right path to catch the criminal. I'm hopeful that they will be behind bars before you know it."

"Are you sure?" a man in the rapidly-growing audience called. "The only thing you've given us is to look out for "a hooded man"! I wear a hood too when it gets a bit chilly, d'you want me to look out for myself as well, then?"

"Look," Harry said, forgoing his veneer of politeness. "I'm here with my godson, we're just doing some shopping. Can't you leave us alone for one second so we can buy school books in peace? Thank you." And with that, he began pushing through the mass, tightly gripping Teddy's hand as he dragged him along.

Some people left, but others grew more insistent in their questioning, despite Harry's pleas.

"Is Minister Shacklebolt going to step down?"

"Are my kids still safe to do their shopping?"

Those questions were accompanied with some shouted accusations about the Aurors being useless.

When Teddy started shouting his name in panic, the mood turned more frantic, and he pulled his wand from his pocket, ready to defend the boy.

"What is all this ruckus in front of my store?" a magically-enhanced voice called from the entrance to one of the nearby shops. "I'm losing customers because of this chaos you're causing, so please leave! All of you! Or I'll make all of you eat slugs!"

Everyone froze, and then, one by one, people scurried away. With some more threats from the shop owner that involved slugs and various orifices, the stragglers walked away as well, leaving Harry, Teddy, and the shopkeeper in their wake.

"That was getting out of hand," Harry said, glancing down the street. "Thank you for your help, erm…" He looked back to see who saved them. It was Julie le Clé, French-born bookstore keeper, former model, and his ex-girlfriend. Her brown hair was short now, and she wore a simple blue outfit that rather suited her thin, tall frame.

"No problem," she said politely, no reaction to his presence visible in her golden-brown eyes. "Come on in for a moment, you two look like you need to sit down."

Harry wanted to protest, but a glance at his bewildered and frazzled godson convinced him that she was right. Before he knew it he was inside the store, sitting on a couch with Teddy, with a mug of tea and a couple of biscuits in front of them.

"Thank you for the tea," Teddy said politely. Harry murmured his gratitude as well, still staring perplexedly at his mug.

"That detective work doesn't get easier, does it?" she asked conversationally as she sorted through some worn books behind her counter.

"You'd know all about detectives, wouldn't you?" he asked quietly. He saw her wince and pause whatever she was working on for a moment.

"It doesn't surprise me you were caught in that crowd just now," she then said, with no change in her tone. "Diagon Alley has been in a strange mood the past week. People are scared."

Harry hummed noncommittally. He was not about to share any information about the case with just anyone, certainly not a person who was currently noted as "suspect" in their archives. And who had cheated on her partner. He took a biscuit and nibbled on it, just to have something to do as the silence reigned on.

"Not a busy place, this," he eventually said. No customers had entered the shop since they were ushered inside.

"No," Julie said. She sighed. "I'll manage, though. This work is good for me. Gives me time to think."

"I see."

"It would be nice if people stopped stealing books, though."

"Oh?" Harry asked, raising his eyebrows. "Did they steal anything specific?"

She regarded him questioningly. "Yes, actually. I used to have a large section on wand-lore, but it's all gone. They've also taken my best copy of _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_."

"Hmm." He was careful not to show any outward reaction, but he made a mental note to share this with the other Aurors when he got back to work. "Did you report it?"

"Yes, I did."

"Good."

He took a sip of his tea. That faint spark of a failed love, combined with intense lingering anger over that day he found her with another man, confused him beyond words. So he did what he thought was best here: remain silent.

"D'you like reading?" Julie asked Teddy, who had been leafing through the odd book.

"Not much," he replied, closing the book again and grabbing his mug with both hands.

"Oh, you can read if you want to, it's okay. Feel free to look around. It's all second-hand anyway."

"How long have you been working here?" Harry interjected. Her talking to his godson irked him.

"Not long," she said, taking the stack of books from the counter and placing them on the shelf behind her. "I bought this shop from the antiquarian just after we…" She pressed her lips together tightly. They were just as red as they used to be, and still contrasted sharply with her pale skin. Teddy, probably barely enduring the awkward mood, pulled on Harry's sleeve, his universal sign that he wanted to leave.

"Right," Harry said, draining the last of his tea. "Thanks for saving us, Julie, and thanks for the tea. We need to go again. Busy schedule."

"You probably think I'm a suspect," she said, making Harry and Teddy stop in their tracks towards the exit.

"I'm afraid I can't comment on that," Harry said, turning around to face her.

"You don't have to, your colleagues are transparent enough." She leaned over the counter, moving her hands through her hair in apparent frustration. "I just want you to know that I had nothing to do with this."

"I –"

"I know this doesn't really mean anything." She sighed. "I just wanted to say that to someone, and I hadn't really gotten the chance to yet."

"Thing is," he said, ignoring Teddy's impatient noises, "why should I trust you? You know I can't ever do that anymore."

"I know, I know," she said, rubbing her face. To his mortification, he saw tears well up in her glassy eyes. "I just…"

"You have a good day now," Harry said, turning away from her. "Come on, Teddy."

He heard her whisper an apology as he walked out the door, but he ignored it. As it was, his emotions were already threatening to spiral out of control.

"What was that all about?" Teddy asked him once they were a considerable distance from the shop.

Harry took a deep breath, taking in the many strange smells of the stores and vendors around him and pushing the lump in his throat down.

"Relationships," Harry said, smiling down at him. He hardly had to look down anymore, he noticed. "They'll drive you bonkers. There's nothing quite like it."

"I don't know if I want a girlfriend, you know," Teddy said. "Just doesn't seem worth it."

Harry patted him on his shoulder in sympathy.


	8. Chapter 7

"Got anything to declare?"

"Just my wand, and some chocolate."

"Hold out your arms, please." Harry did so, his face impassive as one of the three Azkaban guards patted him down. His heart beat quicker as the man got closer to his arms, in particular his left arm, where the Elder Wand was holstered. Luckily, the charms worked as intended, and the guard didn't notice the wand holster as he ran his hand over his forearms.

"Wand, please."

He handed him his holly wand and watched on as he inspected it.

"Work of art, this," he said. "Damn shame Ollivander died. You'll catch the bastard who did it, won't you?"

"He'll rot behind bars here," Harry promised. The guard grunted in approval and gave Harry back his wand.

"Looks in order. You sure you don't need more chocolate?"

"Actually, yeah, I'll take another bar, thanks." He took the offered Honeydukes bar and stuck it in his pocket, next to the other he'd brought himself.

"Good luck out there," the guard said as Harry walked towards the heavy wooden doors at the other end of the harbour house.

"Thanks. I'll see you in a few hours."

One of the wardens opened the door with a flick of his wand, and Harry stepped through. He now faced a stairway that was as black as the steep cliff it was imbedded in. Behind him was the misty and restless sea; in front, the cliffs of Azkaban. The brutalist prison complex was at the very top, its dark and looming outline contrasting starkly against the dull grey sky.

He climbed the narrow, treacherous stairway with an appropriate sense of foreboding. It was true what they said: removing the Dementors hadn't really brought a change to this island. One of the older guards (some said he used to be a Nazi; Harry was sure of it) once described to him the history of this place, that it was created by a sect of Dark wizards performing the foulest deeds the mainland could never have borne. Letting loose an infestation of Dementors was allegedly one of the lesser horrors the island had been witness to. The Dark wizards had long been killed off by the time the Ministry began using the island as a prison in the early eighteenth century.

"Life after death is real, Potter," the wrinkled, crooked guard had told him. "And some things don't die at all. It didn't matter how many villages and people were wiped from the face of the earth, Poland never disappeared. Even weeding the rebels out of those _scheiß_ woods of theirs didn't work. Some things just don't die." Then he glanced up to the grey monolith at the top of the island. "Those Dark wizards may have been gone for centuries, but their work is as alive as you and me. It's all around us, and it is slowly crawling inside. No one lasts here without going mad. You can feel it too, can't you?" And then he'd cackled loudly before hobbling back into the small house at the harbour, leaving Harry alone, dreading his patrol shift even more.

That dread deep in his stomach returned every time he climbed these stairs. He steeled himself for a long, arduous night, reminding himself of that wonderful afternoon at the beach with Ginny and Teddy. That memory would have helped him produce a Patronus, but the Dementors weren't here anymore, making that spell useless. That was why he actually preferred those foul creatures over the lingering darkness of this island: they were something material, something he could defend himself against. There was no defence against the fluid insanity flowing off the dank basalt walls.

The jeering of the inmates was another thing he had had to get used to when he first started patrolling here. There was never a moment of silence, unless there was something wrong. Prisoners moaned, snored, cried, and swore at each other and the guards: and the noises only increased in volume when they saw Harry Potter walk past their cells. In a way, it reminded him of Dudley and his gang, his childhood bullies, which made it easier to tune them out. Kingsley's advice had also helped.

"Their insults are a sign of weakness," he'd said. "They have no power anymore, and they hate that. The only thing they can do behind those bars is torment the wardens. Don't grant them that satisfaction."

That was why he maintained an easy smile on his face as he ambled through the corridors, the light of his wand preceding him. Prisoners shouted at him, called his name, some had even become so beastly that they spat at him, but he paid no heed to them. Physically, but also mentally, there was a set of bars between him and them.

If possible, it had become even darker after his brief break midway through his shift. The wind had picked up as well, and he and the other wardens had to cast several warming charms to shield themselves from the cold. But besides that, nothing noticeable happened.

Until the last few minutes of his patrols.

The prisoner calling Harry's name had a different tone. Not desperate, not filled with hatred, but calm and clear. That grabbed his attention, and he unwillingly came to a halt. Again his name was called, and he looked behind him, at the cells to his right. He edged closer when he heard his name for a third time. It came from the dark corner at the end of the narrow corridor. He held up his wand to shine light on the inky blackness, but it didn't really help that much.

"Come closer, Potter," the voice called from beyond. He took another couple of steps closer. The small parts of the bars that weren't rusted yet reflected the light of his _Lumos_ spell. He glanced at the name plate next to the barred arch.

"Oh, it's you. What do you want?"

"I wanted to have a chat with you," the voice said. Harry could make out the man's silhouette, but no more than that. Still, it was certainly his old colleague, ex-Auror Callum Savage, lying on the lumpy mattress in that dark cell. He heard the man's high-pitched breath. It sounded deafening, even among the symphony of screams further down the hallways.

"Make it quick, then," he said, curious despite his orders not to stand and talk to the prisoners. The last time he'd talked to him, the man had tried to kill him and Ginny, when he was part of a contrived scheme that involved stealing a submarine. They had eventually managed to overpower him, and had left the man for dead in the burning shed they'd fought in.

"I heard the news," the man said. Harry saw him turn around and sit up. "Sounds like trouble's brewing once again."

"What about it?"

Savage uttered a barely human groan as he got to his feet and approached the bars. Now Harry saw his face. Nothing was left of what he used to look like. The hair was scorched away, leaving a lump of scar tissue on his bald scalp. His eyes, lying in scorched sockets, had become milky white, his nose remarkably like Voldemort's used to be. The lips were gone as well, and his mouth was little more than a shapeless hole with a smattering of teeth sticking out at odd angles. The grey prison outfit hid the rest of the man's body from view, but Harry doubted it was faring any better.

"Well," Savage said, the word sounding as malformed as his mouth. "I haven't much else to do. Everything has been taken from me. My sight, my smell, my work. The only things I've got left is my ears and my Auror-trained brain. Using those has been the only thing I've been doing the past few months."

"Do you expect sympathy?" Harry asked plainly. "Cause I'm not inclined to give you that, considering how you ended up here."

"No, of course not. No, the reason I called you over, Potter, was because I sensed this curious thing about you. You see, I cannot see anymore, but when you lose some senses, others become clearer, they define themselves more. I can… see magic now, in a way. Like the energy coming off your light spell. Like the yellow pus seeping from the walls surrounding me. And…" He looked around slowly, showing the angry red scars on his neck, showing the prints of the chain Harry had wrapped around his neck in a desperate act to stop him. "I sensed another thing on you. Something dark, that's trying to merge with you, but not quite succeeding in doing so."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Harry said uneasily.

"There's no need to lie to me," he said, barely able to pronounce the 's'. "There's no need. I'm behind bars, and I can't stand up for longer than a few minutes."

Harry still kept his mouth shut.

"Suit yourself," Savage said. He spun around and walked back into the darkness, where he sat back down on his bed with troubled and jerky movements. Harry made to leave, but then Savage spoke up again.

"Word's been going around the prison that someone's searching for the Deathly Hallows."

Harry turned back to the cell.

"Figured that would grab your attention. So is that what I'm seeing then? Rumours said you were the Master of Death, but I never believed them true. You weren't the type to seek such power, I thought. But it seems like I was wrong about that, then."

"Who told you this?" Harry asked. "Who's been talking about the Deathly Hallows in here?"

Savage chuckled. "No one in particular. Word spreads too fast in here, I'm afraid."

"Who's looking for them, then?" The chuckle got louder and cut straight through Harry's impassive charade. "Tell me, dammit!" he said, gripping the bars with both hands. "Who is it? Tell me!"

"I suggest you slip back into your act," Savage replied. "Someone's coming." Indeed, Harry heard faint footsteps of one of the guards approaching them.

"Who?" he hissed one last time, bringing his face to the bars. He could smell the mould and muff of the rarely cleaned chamber.

"Watch your friends, Potter," Savage said. Harry was sure that he would have smiled if it were possible for him.

* * *

Harry returned to the harbour house together with some other wardens for a change of guard. He nodded politely at the guards there, and they took a one-time Portkey back into the ministry. He separated from the Hit Wizards and ambled through the empty corridors towards the Auror office, where he spent a few minutes writing down anything noteworthy he saw in the prison. His pen had hovered indecisively over the page a long time, but he left most of his exchange with Savage out. He put the piece of paper in the appropriate file, locked the office behind him, and Apparated home. Ginny was waiting for him by the fire, tending to her sore muscles and reading a training report. She looked up at him and opened her arms for him. That was when his façade fell, and he sunk down beside her and fell into her loving embrace.

"I hate Azkaban," he murmured into her shoulder, a lump filling his throat.

"I know, baby," she whispered back, her voice thick with emotion as well.

"I ate chocolate until I felt sick, but still…" he took a deep breath, her flowery scent filling his senses. "I'm supposed to say the people there deserved their fate, and often times I feel they do, but it doesn't feel right. I'm not supposed to apprehend people and feel guilty for having them sent to that hell." He blinked away the tears that threatened to spill over.

"You and Kingsley have tried to change it," Ginny said to him. "And you will, eventually."

"Some of the prisoners are barely even human anymore," he whispered. "The last bit that could be redeemed, it's squeezed out of them because of that place."

"Sirius…"

"The poor man was lucky to still be sane after he got out." They shifted positions, and Ginny slid into his lap. "Though he wasn't really, was he."

"He wasn't," she said sadly. "He was like an uncle to me that summer after my third year, but he didn't sleep, and he drank so fucking much. I think he still had nightmares."

They fell silent. Harry stared over her shoulder into the dying flames of the hearth.

"I'll close Azkaban down," he vowed. "What happened to Sirius should never happen again."

"The Wizengamot will block it again," she said, pulling back to look into his eyes, grinding herself against him in the process.

"Fuck the Wizengamot," he said. "We'll make it happen, somehow."

"There's the Harry I know and love," she purred.

"How do you do it?" he asked. "How do you manage to pull me out of these moods all the time?"

"Magic," she simply said, her brown eyes twinkling with amusement.

"Probably," he snorted. She shifted to get out of his grasp, but he held her tight for just a while longer. "Thank you," he said earnestly, not knowing what else to say but the bare truth. "It's things like this why I love you so much." He trailed off again. He'd come a long way since his teenage years, but he still didn't feel used to saying those three words out loud. But Ginny understood. She kissed his cheek and brought her mouth close to his ear.

"Show me."

* * *

They barely kept their balance as they pushed through the door to the master bedroom. There was urgency in their kiss, as if they could never get enough of the feeling of their lips touching. They stumbled toward the bed. Shirts were lost somewhere along the way, and the feeling of her breasts against his bare chest only spurred him on further. He spun around and pushed her down onto their bed, grinding against her crotch as his erection began to strain against his jeans.

Ginny put her legs around him, trapping him against her as he trailed needy kisses from her lips, down to her jaw and then her breasts. He felt her fingers move from his back to his scalp, and heard her moan as his lips found her nipple. Her fingers trailed up, and then pushed his head further down, past her smooth belly. He ripped open the button of her jeans, pulled the zipper down, and kissed the exposed skin above her knickers, quickly adjusting his pose to kneel less uncomfortably on the cold wooden floor. She whined and tilted her hips, and their frantic hands joined to push down her trousers, exposing herself fully to him. He ran his hands up along her smooth legs and caressed her hips, then looked up to meet her eyes as he slowly lowered his lips to meet her flesh. Her breath quickened as he first tasted her. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply to immerse himself in her smell, feeling her warm skin against his tongue as he licked her folds. Her quickening breaths and tightened grip on his head told him to keep going, and he gave into the overwhelming sensations.

"Your trousers are in the way," he growled. He helped pull them past her heels and then got up to push his trousers and boxers off as well, a groan of pain escaping him as he finally stretched his legs. Ginny shifted up, coaxing him further onto the bed. Her red hair was splayed out over the pillow, she was red in the face, and her knees were raised and spread out, lying completely bare and open for him.

At this moment, he didn't think he'd ever loved her more.

He crawled forward to meet her open arms and legs, once again pressing his lips to hers, his mouth still full of her taste. She closed her legs around him, squeezing him, pulling him closer. He slowly moved his shaft against her, and she briefly pulled her lips away as a burst of ecstasy visibly overcame her. She looked him straight in the eye and growled, "Inside."

Harry fully agreed with that. He grabbed his shaft, and pushed the tip against her. He sank into her, tantalizingly slowly, and he lost himself in those beautiful brown eyes, seeing his love mirrored in there. He moved his hand back to grab her hip as he pushed into her again, this time a bit further, barely able to resist the urge to sink too quickly into that exquisite heat. Soon he built up a shaky rhythm, their erratic breathing and slick sounds of their coupling spurring on that animalistic part of his brain as he whispered loving words into her ear.

"Wait," Ginny gasped, pushing her small hand against his chest. "I wanna switch."

Though it was the very last thing his mind was telling him to do, Harry impatiently obliged, and he pulled himself from her and sat on his knees as he drank in the sight of his girlfriend turning around, tossing her red hair and presenting her rear to him. He landed his palms on her buttocks and greedily squeezed them.

"Potter," Ginny half-grunted, giving Harry a strange, sudden déja-vu to a wonderful, long-foregone afternoon near the Forbidden Forest. But this was real now, and he didn't have to longingly dream about her body anymore now that they were together again. He moved forward on his knees, and hurriedly pressed himself into her once more. Ginny arched her back and pushed her rear toward him to meet his languid thrust. He moved slowly into her a few times, and a white-hot feeling built up in his loins as her soft buttocks met his lap again and again. A grunt escaped his throat, and he gripped the warm, soft flesh of her bum, mind-numbing ecstasy overcoming his senses.

Wanting her to enjoy this as much as he was, he traced his right hand from her bum to her hips, and further along her hipbone, until he found her clitoris. Her belly moved suddenly as she gasped in reaction. She moaned his name and arched her back to meet his thrusts, the sound of their skin coming together echoing through the master bedroom of Grimmauld Place. He continued rubbing her, and her gasps slowly changed and became louder moans. There was a sheen of sweat on his skin, and a drop rolled off his forehead and dripped down onto her back. Her smooth pale skin shone in the dim light of the bedroom lamp.

"Go deeper," she uttered between her pleasured groans. "Fuck, don't stop that!" He squeezed her bum harder with his left hand, barely hanging on to his steady rhythm. She laid her head on the pillow, then suddenly pushed herself up to press her back against him. He kissed her neck and traced his unoccupied hand up to cup her breast from behind. She grabbed his right hand, almost painfully hard, to keep it there on her clitoris. Her toes pushed into his calves and he felt goosebumps form on her skin.

"Like that, do you?" he whispered teasingly in her ear.

"Don't fucking stop," she repeated shakily. Then she stiffened against him, arched her back and quivered in his grasp as a climax burst through her body. Her grip then loosened, and she slumped back down on the bed, still breathing heavily.

"You're beautiful," he said shakily. She looked over her shoulder, glancing at him, light dancing in her eyes. A wide grin spread on their faces, and she coyly pushed her bum back towards him. He adjusted his legs slightly to stop them from falling asleep, and pushed into her anew, grabbing her bum as he gave into his ecstasy once more.

Somewhere in that wonderful rhythm, as he ran his hands over her warm, smooth body in a frenzied dance, his eyes fell on something catching his attention on their bedside table.

The Elder Wand.

He reacted before he thought, and pushed Ginny mid-moan into the soft pillow. Her surprised cry of protest was cut short and muffled. He paused his thrust absentmindedly, still staring at the wand, trying to figure out through the fog of lust how the hell it had ended up there.

"Wha –"

Her question was cut short by him pushing her back into the pillow. Then she spun her head to the side to free her mouth and nose, and Harry thanked whoever was looking out for him that she didn't turn the other way, to the nightstand. For a moment he was worried he'd pushed it too far with his rash action, but then she whined playfully.

"Don't stop," she uttered.

Figuring that was a sign of approval, he growled and pushed her head back. Then, carefully maintaining his rhythm and keeping one hand in her red hair, he reached for his holly wand with the other. He couldn't reach it, though, but it miraculously shot into his outstretched fingers. He wasted no time and banished the Elder Wand to somewhere in the attic. He let out his trembling, bated breath and with a last effort he laid his wand back down on the table, careful not to make a sound.

Now turning his attention back to their love-making, he traced his hand from her head down her back, and he found her toned hips again. Thoughts of how he almost got caught spiralled and dissipated in his haze of frenzied lust. His thrusts got more erratic as he got closer to his climax, and finally he bucked against her wildly, shouting her name as finished inside her.

His movements slowed as he came down from his climax, and he savoured the feeling just a few moments before collapsing on the bed next to her.

"Where…" Ginny breathed. "Where did that come from?"

"Sorry," he said, his chest still rising and falling rapidly, and his eyes not leaving the white ceiling as his senses slowly calmed down again.

"No, it's not like that. It was amazing, honestly!"

"Really?" He turned to look at her. She nodded happily. "I didn't mean to," he said apologetically. "I kind of lost it in the spur of the moment."

"You did," she said, affection colouring her voice. "Let that out more often, Harry, don't be ashamed. You don't have to hide yourself anymore now. I love you."

Later, as they tucked themselves in again after a quick bathroom break, Harry stared off into the darkness, pondering the close call. He still didn't know how the wand ended up there, so he chalked it up as a momentary lapse of concentration on his part. Whatever the case was, it couldn't happen again. The solution of simply telling Ginny came to mind, but he squashed that thought. Not only did he dread her anger once she found out he'd been lying to her for months, but he also feared the consequences of her knowing about the wand. The thing had a long and bloody history, and the possibility of her becoming a part of that terrified him.

For the millionth time he cursed the fact that the wand had come into his possession again. He knew he had had no choice: it was the only way he could have saved Ginny from certain death, and if he had to choose again, he would do the same without thinking twice. But now that the wand had entered his home, it had become an incredibly heavy weight on him. He carried it on him at all times, with that constant spark of fear in the back of his mind: what if the obscuring charms stopped working suddenly? What if Ginny somehow noticed the wand holster when they hugged, kissed, or made love? Everything he did, every joy he experienced, was marred by that touch of fear.

Most of all, he was scared of the effect the Elder Wand was having on him, the disturbing dreams of Remus it had given him, the compulsion he felt to use the wand when he was all alone. The guilt of bringing such evil into their house, the fear of where this was leading, and the awful feeling of isolation he felt by hiding it from everyone, it all blurred into one as his eyes drifted shut and he sunk into slumber.

* * *

It was with a dreaded sense of inevitability that his dream morphed into another nightmare. But he wasn't in the forest this time. Instead, he found himself in the dark corridors of the lower levels at the Ministry. Emotionlessly, he ambled into the labyrinth of dark polished stone, ornamental arches, and heavy wooden doors. The only light came from blue-white flaming torches mounted on the walls and hanging from the ceiling.

His footsteps echoed unnaturally loudly, and the corridors seemed to go on for miles, disappearing into darkness far ahead. He saw no one else as he ambled deeper down, towards the Department of Mysteries. He reached the entrance chamber, marked by a granite monolith, its age unknown, lost in the many generations of wizards that had gathered here. He pushed open the black door behind it and stepped inside. Equally dark doors surrounded him on all sides, and faint lines carved into the basalt floor drew intricate, dizzying, and incomprehensible patterns. He didn't know where he was going, but his legs did, and he went through one of the doors on his left.

A corridor, as wide as it was high, greeted him. Torches were mounted on the wall with heavy, wrought iron sconces, casting long shadows onto the floor and walls. The wall at the far end was clearly visible, and it beckoned him. Inside his mind he protested, but his legs lethargically took the first steps, and he sluggishly ambled down the long hallway. He had no control over his body anymore: his legs walked, his arms moved with the stride, but there was something missing between his mind and his movements. The direct link between brain and body was muddled, broken. Helplessly he watched as he reached the end of the corridor and opened the door, revealing a room he'd hoped to never see again. The deserted rows of benches. The narrow stairs leading down to the centre of the room. The ancient archway with its tattered veil fluttering in a non-existent wind.

He stepped into the Room of Death, not knowing his purpose, but certain of where he was going at the same time.

He descended the nearest stairs and entered one of the upper rows of the amphitheatre, grazing the backrests of the preceding row as he passed. He sat down on a randomly selected chair, back straight and knees forward, almost like this was an important ceremony for which he had to be on his best behaviour. And he sat. And he waited. There was not a single sound in the room, and the only movement came from the curtain flowing in the archway down below.

There was someone else in the room. He saw it in the corner of his eyes. The figure was seated on the other end of the half-rounded stands, in one of the upper rows. It sat perfectly still, its features hidden in the dim shadows of the darkened room. Harry tried to fidget in his seat, but he couldn't. He tried to stand up, but nothing happened. Any release he tried to find for his uneasy feelings was blocked. His body wasn't his own anymore. His gaze turned to the stage again. He knew what was going to happen now, if his past nightmares about Remus were anything to go by. Strangely, he would have almost welcomed the return of his godfather, were it not for the unknown person bearing witness to this scene, invading this oddly private moment.

The deafening silence that pressed down on his ears was finally disturbed by a slight noise coming from down below, halfway between a groan and a breath. Then he saw a hand appear on the archway, clawing at it, dragging its nails across the stone. The rasping sound carried towards him. Slowly, inch by inch, Sirius drew himself past the fluttering veil. In the dim, flickering light, Harry saw his inhuman features, that he looked worse than he did right after he escaped from Azkaban. Just like Remus, little was left of what had once been his godfather.

Harry watched in frustrating agony, unable to run towards Sirius, unable to help him, as he pulled himself onto the stage with pathetic, jerky movements. Once he'd fully emerged from the archway, he slumped down onto the wooden platform and curled up with shaking, bony limbs. He didn't get up. Harry didn't either. His head turned, his eyes looked away from the husk of a person curled up on the stage, and to the figure at the other end of the room.

Except it wasn't there anymore.

* * *

He woke up with a start. It took him awhile to figure out where he was again, but slowly he felt the soft blanket covering him, the trusted mattress beneath him, and Ginny's arm draped over his chest, her legs pressed up against him. Groaning inwardly, he turned around, tucked in his knees, and snuggled up against her until he felt her soothing warmth on his back.


	9. Chapter 8

And the day started anew. He cleaned up Ginny's dishes with a swish of his wand, ate a quick bowl of cereal, and Flooed to work. There wasn't much to do that day except work through some unsorted files and other administrative tasks, and by noon he was thoroughly sick of the worried glances people threw at him. He supposed he did look a bit worse for wear, as he hadn't gotten much sleep last night, but it nonetheless annoyed him to no end. So he pushed the files to a corner of his table and exited his office.

He left the Ministry via the Apparation point at the end of the entrance hall, and appeared on a quiet road, near the edge of London, leading to a small building. It had been hastily built in the sixties, and it showed. The soft yellow paint peeled here and there, the walls were thin and not very isolating, and the window frames badly needed replacement. But he did like the location. The poplar forest bordering the terrain always looked tranquil and inviting. They offered privacy as well, which was exactly why the Ministry had chosen this place for the Auror Academy.

He spoke the password when he arrived ("Weasley is our king"), walked the short distance to the house itself, and entered through the front door. He was greeted by the supervisors with surprise and welcoming friendliness. The young trainees, none older than twenty, were a lot less at ease around him, but he expected that. Eventually they grew more relaxed in his presence, and they were able to show him why they were the lucky few to be selected for the academy.

Tuesday was practice day, everyone's favourite day of the week, where the trainees learned things like new spells, combat tactics, and forensic investigation. Harry spent a small hour watching on, talking to the supervisors and asking the odd question to the Aurors-to-be. He gladly accepted the invitation to have lunch with them. Toast in hand, he answered some questions of the trainees about life as an Auror, and how the Ollivander case was progressing. Eventually, though, he regretfully said goodbye and went back to the Ministry, where he had to endure even more worried stares the rest of the day.

* * *

It was a cloudy Thursday morning when Auror Ghezzal slapped him on his shoulder at the coffee machine.

"Morning, Harry," he said jovially. "You look like you need that coffee."

"Says you," he replied, a smile cracking through for the first time that morning. "What's going on?"

"Pub night's this Friday. D'you think you can come? You missed the last one."

"Yeah, I think I can. I'll check in a minute to be sure."

"Good man," Ghezzal said, placing his mug under the machine after Harry took his away.

"I'll invite Johnson as well," Harry said. "She could use one, don't you think?"

"Yeah, she's a bit shy for an Auror, isn't she?" Ghezzal replied. Harry stopped himself from protesting as he dunked three sugar cubes in his coffee.

"What d'you think a few drinks will do to her?" he asked. They grabbed a cookie from the basket and ambled to the office.

"Oh, I know the type. I tell you, you put a couple beers in them, they'll open up. She won't stop talking all night."

"Wanna bet?" Harry asked, grinning at him.

"A tenner."

"You're on." They shook hands, but Harry wasn't too confident about his odds.

* * *

The last thing he did on Friday before calling it a day was write a note to Kingsley about the lack of progress in the Ollivander and the house-elf cases. This was in reply to a message from the Minister asking for more regular updates. No doubt Castlereagh and the other opposition members were starting to worry him. He put the sealed note in his outbox at the far left corner of his desk and watched it disappear into thin air.

He then stood up and made a quick visit to the loo, greeting Auror Johnson when he walked by her in the corridor. While sitting in the small white cubicle, he made sure the Elder Wand was securely strapped to his wrist. Afterward, he held his hand under the soap dispenser, watching the soap dribble out of the small gargoyle's mouth, pressed the water faucet and tried to wash the ink off his hands, but it wasn't that effective. Resigning himself to having ink spots on his hands the rest of the night, he walked back to the office and joined up with Ron, Proudfoot and Ghezzal.

"We'll meet the others there," Ghezzal said to him. "C'mon, grab your coat, we're a bit late already."

"We're _supposed_ to be late," Harry said.

" _Casually_ late, boss, not this," the Auror replied in amusement. They made their way to the entrance hall, casually chatting about the day.

"… So this goblin, I kid you not, this goblin grabs his coffee and then he throws a whole bag of lemon pepper in it! The smell, I tell you, it was awful!" Proudfoot told them.

"Ugh, why?" Ghezzal exclaimed. "What's wrong with normal coffee?"

"Hang on, mate," Ron said. "How many sugar cubes do you add normally?"

"I've seen him do four," Harry said.

"That was only once," Ghezzal mumbled.

"Once too many," Proudfoot said sternly. They arrived at the end of the entrance hall. "Here we are, then. See you on the other side."

One by one, they stepped into the hearth, disappearing in a rush of green flames.

"Stick the landing this time, Harry?" Ron asked teasingly. "The Winking Cyclops!" He disappeared in a burst of flames.

Harry rubbed his face, unsuccessfully trying to brush off his tiredness. Then he stepped into the flames as well and Flooed away.

Laughter, chatter and clinking glasses greeted his ears as he stumbled clumsily into the pub. Ron was prepared, luckily, and caught him before he could bump into any tables.

"One day," he said. "One day you'll get it."

"Shut up," Harry said. "Get me a pint, will you?"

"And me," Proudfoot added quickly. Ron sighed and turned to Ghezzal.

"Thanks," the latter said, grinning in victory. Ron's shoulders slumped and he trudged to the bar.

Proudfoot led them to a table near one of the small windows, and they sat down on the wooden chairs after disposing of their jackets on the nearby coat rack.

"Here we are," Ron announced, arriving with four beer glasses floating in front of him. They clunked down on the table, and Ron seated himself with a grunt. "Cheers, boys."

They clinked glasses and took a gulp.

"So, when d'you reckon Kingsley's gonna reach out to the Prophet in some way?" Ghezzal asked. "Castlereagh has given interviews, he's organised parties and dinners, all without any response from the Minister himself."

"I dunno," Ron said. "To be fair, I don't think anyone outside of the old Pureblood elite expected this."

"Yeah, that, and Kingsley's waiting for us to solve the murder case," Harry said uncomfortably. He took a large swig. "The main criticism against him is that he hasn't done enough to guarantee everyone's safety. Us catching Ollivander's murderer would disprove that."

"Well," Proudfoot said loudly after a short silence. "Bugger for him."

Conversation drifted to easier subjects after that. When Harry stopped by the bar to get another round (he'd long since lost count), he spotted Livermore, Hammond and Johnson on the other side of the small pub, and he decided it was time for a change of company. He excused himself from the others and crossed the pub, pint in his hand.

"Room for your old boss here?" he asked when he arrived at their table.

"Sure, have a seat," Hammond said, whipping out her wand and summoning an unused chair from a nearby table. "Now, don't be nervous, you two. He only gets a bit touchy when he's had a Jäger or two."

"That's all right," Livermore said, falling into beat effortlessly. "I know loads of nasty hexes from Auror training, and I've been itching to try them out on someone."

"I've been warned, then," Harry said, grinning foolishly. "Although whatever you'll do to me will pale in comparison to what Ginny will do once she finds out."

"That's how you like it, though, isn't it?" Hammond asked teasingly.

"I think that's called Stockholm syndrome," Johnson commented.

"Well, that depends," Hammond said. "Do you think she's kidnapping you, boss?"

"Only sometimes."

"But you don't notice that," Johnson said deadpanned. "Not until it's too late."

Livermore sighed tragically. "You're doomed, then, boss."

"Alas, I love it too much!" Harry said. "So, girls, have you had any pub nights with your colleagues before?"

"We have, with the academy, I guess," Livermore said. "But I've never really had a proper job before this. Although, I did work part-time in the canteen of the Daily Prophet, now that I think about it."

"Oh really?" Harry asked. "What's it like in the nest of the enemy?"

"Not too bad, actually. But I guess back then I didn't look at them the same way I do now."

"Did you become friends with Rita Skeeter?" Hammond asked.

"No, she'd retired by then. I still wonder why, you know? She wasn't that old, she wasn't ill and she was still successful. So why did she just quit?"

Harry hid a knowing smile. "Whatever the reason, I think we can all rejoice she isn't there anymore."

"Shame the replacements are at least as bad," Hammond noted.

"True. But them stalking Ginny forced her to hire me as her bodyguard, and we all know where that led to."

"Stockholm syndrome," Johnson said.

"Four fallen comrades," Hammond noted sadly. Harry's smile slid off his face, and Livermore and Johnson looked on with uncertainty as he and Hammond shared a small moment of silence. They knew the risks, and there'd been a fair share of Auror deaths. But that never made losing colleagues any easier, and Harry still found himself remembering that day from time to time, thinking back to the swarm of witches and wizards flying around the helicopter, trying to protect him and Ginny.

He did the only thing that felt right at the moment. He raised his glass. "To our fallen colleagues," he said, like so many times before.

"Bless 'em," Hammond added. The other two toasted as well, he noted appreciatively.

"Anyway," he said after clearing his throat. "The last thing they'd want is for us to mope the pub night away."

Perhaps this was the perfect time for Ron to arrive.

"'Scuse me, ladies," he said, summoning a chair and squeezing in between Harry and Johnson.

"Had enough of those two, then?" Harry asked, pointing over his shoulder to Proudfoot and Ghezzal.

"There's only so much of the Bachelor Brothers I can take," he said. He turned to the others. "Hi, all, what're we talking about?"

"I was about to ask Claire if she had any jobs before she joined us," Hammond said.

"A good question!" he declared. They turned to the rookie Auror expectantly.

"Well, yeah, I did," she said. "But I'm Muggleborn, and summer jobs are a lot more common for Muggles than for wizards."

"So I've heard," Hammond said. "So what did you do, then?"

"I was an assistant in a bookstore," she said. "Second-hand books. Just like that suspect in the Ollivander case, Julie le Clé, funny enough."

Harry coughed and quickly took a swig. "Yeah, let's not talk about work right now, shall we?"

"Why not?"

"That girl's his ex," Hammond said in a stage whisper.

"Bad breakup," Ron added, not bothering to lower his voice.

Johnson's eyes widened, and her cheeks turned a shade of red rather quickly. "I knew that. Forgot about it," she said, looking away from the table. "Sorry, boss."

"'S alright, I don't exactly flaunt with that tidbit," Harry said, once again having to remind himself that, via the papers, everyone knew about his love-life. "So d'you like books, then?"

"Yeah," she said, visibly willing herself to get over that moment. "Part of the Ravenclaw DNA, I guess."

"Blimey, we've got a complete set, then!" Hammond said excitedly. "Ravenclaw, two Gryffindors, Slytherin, and me, the Hufflepuff!"

"Dumbledore would've been ecstatic," Harry chuckled.

"D'you still read often, then, Claire?" Livermore asked.

"Not that much anymore, I'm afraid," she said sadly. "I'm always too tired after work to really concentrate on reading."

"Oh yes, don't I know it as well," Hammond said. "And you know what? Bless my husband, Benji, he does the cooking at night. I don't know where I'd be without 'im."

"Oh, what a dear," Livermore said in admiration. "Makes me jealous, you know, 'cos my boyfriend can't for the life of him cook a meal. It's pathetic."

"Yeah, when he first cooked for me, I was absolutely amazed, y'know," Hammond said. "Expectations were low, I'll tell you. Never thought I'd see the day a bloke could be useful in the kitchen."

"What about you two, then?" Livermore asked, clearly enjoying this informal moment with her co-workers and boss.

"I'll have you know that I can cook better than Ginny," Harry replied smugly while Ron suddenly became very interested in his coaster. "And Hammond can back me up."

"Oh, it's true," Hammond added, brushing Harry's arm. "Never had a better steak than when I ate at his place."

Approving comments were heard around the table.

"And you, Claire?" Hammond asked. "You never told us about your love life before, and I say it's time that changes."

"Oh," the girl said, visibly trying to become smaller in her chair. "I'm single at the moment. Everything's sort of been on hold since I got the job and moved out."

"No one catching your eye either?" Livermore pressed.

Johnson furtively glanced around the table, and it didn't escape Harry's notice how often her gaze landed on him. Internally, he groaned.

"No," she said. "But I haven't exactly been out on the prowl, and the offer's not all that great in the Ministry."

Livermore and Hammond hummed in agreement.

"Don't you dream of being asked out by Arnold from the archives, then?" Hammond asked teasingly.

"God, no! That'd be horrible!" Johnson exclaimed.

"He's a great bloke," Ron said, affronted.

"Had a good time at the pub with him once," Harry added, feeling some strange obligation to come to the man's defence.

"I'm sure he's lovely," Livermore said. "But trying to imagine a relationship with him, going to bed with him… just doesn't work, does it?"

A small silence, filled in by raucous laughter coming from the tables around them.

"Didn't you have a boyfriend when we were in the academy, though?" Livermore asked Johnson.

"Yeah," she murmured.

"Well?" Hammond asked, clearly intrigued. "What happened?"

"I'd rather not talk about it," she said. She followed up by emptying the considerable contents of her beer glass. "I'm going to get another pint. Anyone else want one?" They all pushed their empty glasses toward her. She levitated them and turned around to head to the bar.

"Poor girl," Livermore said, watching her retreating form. "She hasn't been the same since that. Whatever happened must've been pretty intense."

"Is that why she's so much quieter now than when she applied for the job?" Harry asked.

Livermore nodded sadly. "It's been hard for her. I tried to talk to her, see if I could help, but we're not really that close."

"Alright," Harry said. He tried not to, not during pub night, but still he started thinking of ways to handle this issue, while Ron, Hammond and Livermore chatted around him. Obviously, the way things were going at the moment could not go on for much longer. The girl was suffering from personal issues, and they were hampering her ability to do her job. That was the last thing one wanted in an Auror.

"Here we are," Johnson said, floating the pint glasses around the table. Harry watched his settle down on the dark wooden table, foam spilling over the edge in the sloppy levitation charm. After a muted cheers, they took a swig in silence.

"Have you ever done something you regret so much you wished there was a stronger Time-Turner?" Johnson asked.

"Aye," Hammond said dully. She sighed, somehow capturing the sudden dim mood that descended upon their table. "I wish I'd gone abroad. Seen the world a bit before I had too much to worry about. I always would've liked to visit Moscow and Saint Petersburg."

"Beautiful cities, those are," Livermore said. "Though the Magical community hasn't been the same since the Soviet terrors."

"I know, I've heard the stories. But the Muggle parts fascinate me just as much. Ah well," she said, taking another swig. "One day, when our boss here decides to give us a pay rise."

"That'll be the day," Ron said dreamily.

"You lot are getting more than you deserve," Harry teased. But the smile didn't come so easy as earlier in the evening.

"What about you, then, boss?" Livermore asked him, sounding unenthusiastic for the first time since he'd met her. "What's your biggest regret?"

Harry sighed. "I've got plenty of regrets, I'll be honest." He sipped his pint, staring out of the window into the gentle summer evening. "Not doing more to stop the War earlier than it did, for starters. How many lives would have been spared if we had ended it a few months earlier? Or a year?"

"We don't know that, mate," Ron said, patting his back.

"And that's exactly what makes you think. But," he said, sitting up straighter. "I've had time to deal with that now. That part's from another time, it feels like. I'd say the biggest thing that I regret now, would be…" he scratched the stubble on his chin. Ginny's comments on how she'd like it if he grew a beard sprang to mind. "Letting Ginny go all those years ago. Letting work get in the way of us. Girls, the same goes for you. When you've found that person in your life, don't let anything get in the way of you two. There's nothing that's worth more."

"Amen," Hammond declared. She raised her glass. "To love."

"Cheers," the others chorused. Johnson emptied her glass with a speed that impressed even Ron.

"You know the biggest thing I regret?" She asked, setting her glass back down with a thud. She paused, her resolve just not cracking. "Cheating on Henry."

That silenced the table.

"Your ex?" Hammond asked.

"Yeah."

"What, erm…" she said carefully, showing bravery that the others, including Harry, didn't have. Her expression, though, wouldn't have looked out of place if she were sticking her hand in a bee's nest. "What made you do it?"

Johnson sighed. "I'll try to explain. I don't even know if there's anything to explain. Henry was the sweetest, most considerable bloke I could ask for. Basically the biggest gripe I had with him was that he never cleaned up after himself. We were as happy as could be. And then one day I met this bloke, and…" she shook her head. "You know what, when I look back on it, I don't even know why or how it happened. But Henry saw us… you know. And that was the end of our relationship. He packed my stuff the same day. I slept at my mother's that night." She said it in one stream, not even a hint of emotion creeping into her story. And her gaze never strayed from the glass in front of her.

"That's, erm…" Ron attempted.

"I wouldn't blame you if you lot will hate me for this," she said.

"No, it's not that," Ron argued. "This is just…"

"I've spent a lot of time cursing people who cheat on their partner," Harry admitted uncomfortably. "That's how me and Julie broke up."

"Oh. Well, I did as well, before…" Johnson said. She met his gaze, a slightly glassy, drunken haze visible in her green eyes. "But it's like I said, there's nothing I regret more than that. And I'm sure your ex feels the same, if she's a sane person."

"She cheated on me," he replied tersely, his intoxicated state mingling in with his irritation.

"But–"

"You know what?" Ron said, veering up. "I think I need some fresh air. Come on, Harry." He pulled him out of his chair. "Night, all, have a lovely weekend!" he called over his shoulder as he steered a seething Harry out of the pub, summoning their coats and bags on the way out.

The cool summer air greeted him as they stepped out the door and into the cobbled alleyway.

"What's her fucking problem?" he burst out as soon as they were out of hearing range. "Fucking talking about cheating like that, like regretting it makes everything fine again?"

"C'mon mate, get it together," Ron said to him as they exited the alley into St. James' street.

"What's so fucking hard about simply not sleeping around when you're in a relationship anyway?" he raged as Ron guided him by the shoulder through the outgoing crowds. "If you don't want a relationship anymore, that's fine, but just break it off, y'know?"

"Yeah, there's definitely something wrong with her," Ron said absently. He pulled him across the road into a quieter street. "Trust me, mate, she had no business talking about your break-up like that."

"Damn right she didn't!" he shouted. "Tell you what, Ron," he stumbled over a protruding paving stone, but Ron had a firm grip on his shoulder. "If it wasn't for your sister, I'd be dead lost now. I thought I would never trust anyone again in a relationship after what Julie did to me. If I didn't have Ginny right now…"

"Well that's good," Ron said. "Weasley magic for you."

"Weasley is our queen!" Harry cried. "And king of course," he added, slinging an arm over his mate's shoulder.

"And I'm going to let Ginny do that magic on you now. D'you think I can leave you with her without you saying something that'll get you hexed?"

"You never know with that witch," he quipped.

"Merlin help me," Ron muttered. "Alright, I'm gonna Apparate us now, hang on…"

They appeared in an empty alleyway next to the square in front of Grimmauld Place.

"Seriously," Harry said, feeling a sadness he hadn't felt in a while floating up. "I'd be miserable if it weren't for you lot. I'm a messed up person, you know?"

"Better than anyone," Ron said. Harry found his lack of smile even more saddening.

"There's some things I want to tell you," he said seriously, rubbing his left arm against his thigh.

"I'm sure you do, but I'll let you save that for when you're sober. You'll thank me for that. D'you have the keys?"

"I've got the key to your heart."

" _Accio keys_ ," Ron said. They zoomed from Harry's right pocket into his waiting hand. They stepped up to the front door, and Ron opened it.

"Oh, you're back already," Ginny said, appearing in the hallway while Harry tried valiantly to take off his shoes without falling over. "How was it?"

"Ginny-love!" Harry cried, stumbling against the wall as he turned to her. He paid no heed to the looks she and Ron exchanged, and went back to taking off his shoes.

"Well, Harry, it's been fun," Ron said. "See you on Monday, yeah?"

"Cheers," he said merrily. "Thanks for bringing me home."

"Any time, mate. Bye, Gin."

"Bye, Ron! Give our love to Hermione!"

"D'you need help getting to the living room?" she asked after the door closed.

"Me? Psh, I can manage."

He actually did manage to drag himself onto the couch and accept a mug of hot tea from his girlfriend. Maybe his smile during this was a bit too wide, and maybe his drunken haze made him a bit overzealous in professing his love to her, but when he thought back to the mess he'd been in before they had gotten together again, any doubt about being overly affectionate disappeared again. And later that night, after carefully adjusting his position so that she wouldn't rub against his left arm and the wand he kept hidden there, he fell asleep contently.


	10. Chapter 9

Monday morning greetings around the office were awkward. The knowing stares from Hammond, Livermore and Proudfoot and the lack of reaction from Johnson chased him into his office. After getting a cup of coffee, he started the mundane tasks of sorting his inbox and a few loose files, but it was never his favourite part of the day. Halfway through, he forcefully pushed the tasks aside. He set his half-empty cup aside, stood up, and entered the main room again.

"Auror Johnson?"

"Yes?" two people said.

"Claire Johnson," Harry clarified. "My office, please." He felt the eyes of the office burning into his back as he retreated behind his desk.

Johnson entered soon after, looking like this was the last place she wanted to be right now.

"You asked to see me, sir?" She asked, steadily looking down at the floor between them.

"Close the door, please, and take a seat."

She did as he asked, and sat down, fiddling her hands.

"Now, your first pub night wasn't quite what we hoped it would be –"

"I'm sorry," she blurted out before he could continue.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm sorry," she said again, wringing her hands together. "I went too far, and I shouldn't have said those things. I just haven't really had the time to talk to anyone about this, and it kind of tumbled out. It was really unprofessional, and it won't happen again. But I understand if you don't want me back in the office anymore."

"Johnson," he said after her rushed monologue, running his hand through his hair. She didn't look up. "Claire?" This time she did, allowing him to see the tears shining in her eyes. He coughed. "First of all, you're not fired. I don't fire people just out of anger. I'm not that kind of boss. As for last Friday night…" he sighed. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry as well. I shouldn't have lost my temper. I think it's best if we put the matter to rest from now on, if you're alright with that."

"Definitely," she said, sighing in relief. "Thank you, sir."

"I do want to talk to you for a while longer, though," he said, inwardly cursing his role as Head Auror for these moments. "Specifically how your personal situation is affecting your work here."

"Oh." Her happy expression was nowhere to be seen anymore as she despondently inspected the cabinets to their left.

"I want you to know that I am purely speaking as your boss here," he emphasised. "Your trial period is coming to the halfway point soon, and while your time here has been satisfactory, it has not as fruitful as I expected it to be, considering your excellent academy reports." Johnson's ears reddened, and lines started to show at the corners of her mouth. He paused to gather his troubled thoughts and translate them into office jargon. "There is a new generation of enthusiastic, and extraordinarily capable Aurors coming up, and you're part of that. But the problem with that is that it sets a very high standard. Given your current situation, I have my doubts that you are able to meet that standard."

"Sir –"

"Please let me finish," he interjected. "I've spent a lot of time near Albus Dumbledore growing up, and he always believed in giving people second chances. So do I." He sighed. "You have three months left on your trial. I hope you can use that time to prove my doubts wrong, and show me the Auror you can become. Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll have to give your place to another Academy member."

"I understand," she said, her eyes shining with unshed tears. He wished he could comfort her, but considering his experience with girls not named Ginny, that would probably only make things worse.

"Good," he said instead, standing up. She followed suit. "I really think you can still make it, you know," he said, deciding on the spot to speak his heart. "I know there's a great Auror in you. You just need to start believing that yourself as well. Don't be afraid, just let it come out more."

"I'll try," she said.

"I know you will," he said, smiling at her. "I need to speak to our department head now. But one last thing before you leave: I must ask you whether there is anything you'd like to tell me," he said gently. "Anything at all."

She paused, rocking back and forth on her feet.

"No, sir," she then said. "And thank you."

"Any time," he said, not missing her sincerity. She turned around and closed the door behind her. He sunk down again, massaging his temples. One difficult conversation down, and the next one was planned five minutes from now.

* * *

"Things are not going well," Amelia Bones said.

"I wholeheartedly agree," he said.

"Exactly one week from now, students will be leaving for Hogwarts. Have you come any closer to solving the elf case last week?"

"No."

She pursed her lips. "What about Ollivander's case? The Veritaserum still needs two weeks to prepare, is that right?"

"Yes. We've got interrogations planned for when it's done."

"That's not good enough," she said. "The mood is tense on the streets, Harry. I haven't seen Diagon Alley as miserable during the holidays since Voldemort's second rise."

"I know," he said. "Me and my godson were almost the victim of mob violence, if you can remember."

"Vividly. Kingsley is very anxious for any progress. He's been constantly breathing down my neck this past week."

"Yours too? He's got a long breath, hasn't he?"

"Why do you always get so snarky in these times?" she asked.

"Part of the charm," he shrugged. "But yeah, he's said the same things to me. The opposition is really milking Ollivander's murder."

"Of course they are," she said. "It's their best weapon for the time being, and they don't even know about the Hogwarts case."

"So we have to solve it quickly," he concluded.

"Exactly. So what are you doing to speed up the process?"

"Well, everything I can, but we're at a complete dead end for now," he argued. "We've analysed all the evidence from both cases multiple times, and we've interviewed everyone who might've seen or heard something; some of them multiple times. There's nothing more to be done until that bloody serum is done!"

She steepled her hands together and leaned back in her chair. "Who are your suspects so far?"

"We're going to interrogate bookshop owner Julie le Clé and jeweller Gerard Bonham."

"But you're not convinced it's either of them?" She asked.

He frowned, and briefly looked away. "No."

"I can see that you have someone in your mind, so out with it."

Harry regarded her shrewd expression again while he considered his options. Mentally apologising to Ron, he chose to speak up. "This is not based on any evidence," he said. "But I think it's Yaxley who's behind both murders."

She showed no real reaction to that except maybe she leaned forward slightly. "What makes you think that?" she pressed.

"It's just a feeling I have. I –" he paused. "I can't imagine who else would be capable of breaking into Hogwarts unnoticed, without leaving a trace."

"What about Lucius Malfoy?"

"Malfoy's still in France, and hasn't done anything noticeable ever since he fled there, according to the French Aurors."

She absently leafed through some papers on her desk, a sign that she was trying to make a decision.

"Thank you for telling me," she eventually said, her expression unreadable. "Auror Robertson is still working on locating Corban Yaxley, I presume?"

"Yes he is."

"And I seem to remember telling you a while back to do things by the book?"

"I believe so, yes," he replied carefully.

"Good. I think that's it for today, then. I'll see you next week."

"Have a good day," he said, feeling a headache coming on.

* * *

After a frustratingly slow work day, dinner, a nightmare about Sirius, and a rushed breakfast, Harry found himself once again in the Hogwarts Headmistress' office, seated across from a grim-faced Professor McGonagall.

"Things are not going well," she said.

"I've heard that before."

"Your report about the progress of Bilfy's murder was worrying, Mr Potter, and for the first time in thirteen years, I'm dreading the arrival of students next week."

"So am I, Professor," Harry said seriously. "Which is why we're here to discuss Auror patrols."

"Indeed. Have you reconsidered my request for six permanent on-duty Aurors?"

"I have. I think we can afford it for the time being, seeing as we're unable to progress any further in the cases. However, we will probably need to recall a few should there come any change in that."

"And when do you expect that change to happen?"

"Two weeks from now, at the bare minimum, but realistically I think we'll be stuck with what we have for three, maybe even four weeks. So I propose we make a schedule for September, and plan a new one at the end of the month."

The Headmistress twirled her wand in her wrinkled hands. "Those initial few weeks should be enough deterrent for our unknown killer. I think I can agree to your proposal, although I do want to make this quite public."

"To give the killer a clear signal to stay away?"

"Indeed."

"Chances are, and this depends on their personality, it'll serve more as an invitation."

"I've thought of that, but I'm willing to take the risk. Reluctantly so, might I add. That's why I want so many Aurors here."

"I understand. Alright, agreed, on one condition."

"Yes?"

"This murder case stays a secret."

She looked ready to explode. "I beg your pardon?" she asked with a tight voice.

"Professor," Harry said, trying to placate her. "There is more at stake here than just this case."

That did not help.

"I will not take part in your underhanded political games, Mr Potter!" she cried, interrupting whatever excuse he was planning to string together. "I thought better of you, and Kingsley even so!"

"Then don't take part," he said, swallowing the sting he felt at her remark. "All it takes is one statement, and if that's too much for you as well, let me do the talking. But this case will not become public."

He met her furious gaze challengingly, reminding himself that he could always Floo in Kingsley should she need more convincing.

"Merlin help me, it's the last thing I want to do, but alright," she said eventually, still staring him directly in the eyes.

"Thank you," he said.

"You will give the statement, but I will review it before you present it to the press."

"Of course," he said.

"Very well, then. Off you go."

"Have a nice day, Professor," he said as he stepped into the fireplace. She didn't reply.

* * *

Steam billowed up to the arched ceiling of King's Cross station. The Hogwarts Express was to leave in five minutes.

After his weekly talk with Amelia, which had been growing ever more strained as the school year approached, Harry had rushed to Andy's home in Pembrokeshire. He'd expected to find a panicked Teddy desperately searching for the last few things he'd forgotten to pack, but that hadn't been the case this year. His dull brown hair clued Harry in that something was wrong today.

"Excellent timing, for once," he told his godson, walking by his side toward the train. "I'm glad you're beginning to learn."

But a despondent "yeah" was the only reply he got from Teddy. Harry and Andromeda shared a worried look. The boy had been in a strange mood all day, and it left them puzzled. The upside to that, of course, was that he didn't get distracted by everything while packing. Teddy normally had the attention span of a squirrel.

"C'mon," Harry said, patting him on the shoulder. "Let's find you a compartment before they're all full."

"Alright," Teddy sighed. They set off again, walking past posters of a serious-looking Harry and McGonagall talking to a number of journalists. _"Auror guards at Hogwarts following wand-maker's murder!"_ read the subtitle. The press had bought the connection to Ollivander's case, and he thanked his lucky stars for that.

"Oh, I think I see Jenny Carr over there! I'll go and have a quick chat. Don't leave without saying goodbye, though, mister!" Andy said, wagging her finger at Teddy.

Harry took this one-on-one moment, kindly given to them by Andy, to cast a few privacy charms around him, his godson, and their luggage cart.

"Alright, Teddy. What's wrong?"

He shrugged in reply, purposefully looking away. "You said I could tell you anything, right?"

"Yes, that's right."

"And that you wouldn't be mad at me?"

"I could never be mad at you," Harry said, the word "son" on the tip of his tongue. "Only disappointed," he cheekily added.

"That's even worse!" Teddy said, and finally he cracked a smile. His hair even got a shade lighter.

"It's supposed to be," he replied mock-sternly.

"So you promise you won't be cross with me?"

"Promise."

He visibly steeled himself. "Well, it just hit me yesterday, y'know, when I was packing my trunk. I had it last week and yesterday as well, but…" Harry suppressed a stab of annoyance at his godson's habit of beating around the bush. "But I… I just sometimes wish my parents were here… instead of you."

Harry swallowed at the sight of his forlorn godson. "I see."

"And it's not because you and Andy have been bad to me," he hastily added. "It's just…"

"That we can't fill that void?"

"Is that bad?" he asked in a small voice.

"Bad? No, no, of course it's not bad!" Harry said. "I reckon it's completely normal to feel that way from time to time. I had that too with Mrs. Weasley, you know. Doesn't matter how kind they are to you, and how much they do for you, you always wish for that something more."

"Yeah."

They were silent for a moment. Harry glanced at his watch. Two minutes left.

"Harry?"

"Yes?"

"How come I miss them, even though I've never met them?"

That brought him up short. He opened his mouth, but words evaded him as he tried to grasp at fleeting thoughts he normally kept locked away in the dusty attic of his mind.

"Sorry for asking," Teddy mumbled, his downcast expression and dark hair colour returning in full force. "I reckon I should leave now. Look, Andy's coming back."

Harry wanted to explain his silence to Teddy, but there was no time. He reluctantly cancelled the privacy charms as Andy emerged from the bustling crowd of parents and children hastily saying their goodbyes.

"Good, you didn't leave while I was gone," she said.

"She has so much trust in us, doesn't she?" Harry asked Teddy. The corners of his godson's lips twitched faintly in reply. Then Andy descended upon him and wrapped him in a big hug.

"Now be good this year."

"Yes, Andy."

"Write loads."

"Every week."

"And do your best in class."

"I will."

"I love you very much, my dear," she said, planting a firm kiss on his cheek. She said not a word about the dangers and Aurors at Hogwarts, Harry noticed.

"Love you too, Andy," Teddy murmured.

She let him go and stepped aside for Harry.

Before he hugged his godson, he fished the Marauders Map from his pocket, but he held his finger up to stop Teddy from grabbing it.

"I will not hear any more stories of you breaking into other common rooms, you hear me?"

"Loud and clear."

"And I want you to be extra careful this year. No more nightly trips around the castle."

"I guess," he said, looking down at the concrete floor.

"Look at me." Teddy looked up, but it was clearly the last thing he wanted to do. "Promise me. Please."

That last word did the trick. "Alright," he said reluctantly. "But why are there Aurors at Hogwarts? Apart from Mr. Ollivander's murder?"

"It's safer that way," he said evasively.

"Oh. Will you be there as well?"

"No, I can't," he said sadly. "I'm sorry."

"Oh." He took the map from him, and Harry embraced him tightly. Teddy never even returned the hug. They separated soon after, and started carrying the trunk towards the train, just as the final whistle blew.

Teddy only half-heartedly waved back at them as the train pulled away, and he disappeared from the window all too soon.

"What was it?" Andy asked him after the Express fully left the station building.

"He misses his parents," Harry replied.

"I thought so. These sort of days have always been hard on him," she said. "He'll be back to his bouncy self in no-time."

"I hope so, Andy," he sighed. "I'm worried for him."

"You always are. And now we know where he gets his moodiness from," she teased.

"Yeah, and we both know where he gets his sprightliness from."

She snickered. "Come on, grump," she said, hooking her arm around his. "You need to get back to work."

* * *

Unfortunately there wasn't much to do at the office. The Veritaserum still had to ripen for a good while, and there were otherwise no new developments in the case. Harry instead instructed the others who had nothing on their hands to finally start sorting out the mess of props and things at the far end of the office, and then he visited the Auror Acadamy to take his mind off things. Not much had been cleaned up by the time he returned.

He figured it wouldn't hurt to leave work a bit earlier than usual. Ginny wasn't due home for another hour, and that gave him a perfect opportunity to once again test the Elder Wand in the attic. He hadn't had time for that the past few weeks, and he was eager to see if there was any change in the wand's behaviour. But his session, which included attempting to levitate old, dusty books, was just as fruitless as before. He angrily banished the books to the other end of the attic and stormed downstairs again. He knew he was missing something important, but it evaded him, to his utmost frustration. In his anger, he added more spices to the curry than he should have, but he evaded explaining his mood to Ginny.

"You're a spicy girl," he said. "Thought it was fitting."

"Ha ha," she replied sarcastically. But he saw his own sadness reflected in her eyes. Of course she knew, and he was abusing her willingness to let it go. He vowed, like he'd done so many times before, to tell her about the wand soon. He had no excuse.

Distraction came in the shape of a bombshell of an article. The latest edition of _The Quibbler_ opened with an in-depth analysis called _The Dark Side of Shacklebolt's Reign_. It wouldn't be a _Quibbler_ piece if it didn't miss the point entirely, but it did raise Harry's eyebrows when Hermione pushed it under his nose during lunch.

"Everyone's talking about it," she said, looking at him worriedly while he quickly read through it. "This is all bollocks, isn't it?"

"Of course it is," Harry said dismissively. "No, I can assure you that there's no secret deal with a galvanist sorcerer from Geneva to try and resurrect Dumbledore and reinstate him as Supreme Mugwump."

"But–"

Harry stopped her and cast a _Muffliato_ after making sure no one was watching them.

"But are they onto something? There's a lot of secrecy around Kingsley and you. Too much, Harry. You won't even share some things with Ron and me."

Harry's eyes unconsciously drifted to her belly, which had started to strain her muggle three-piece suit, and then up again.

"There's only one thing right now that we have to keep secret," he said. "But that's only temporary, and–"

"It's got to do with what I had to look up for you, isn't it?" she interrupted him. "About the house-elves? I can help you, Harry. I always have."

"You know I can't answer that," he said. "It'll pass soon, and then I'll tell you all about it. Promise."

"This isn't just about me. I'll hold you to that, but people are becoming suspicious of you and Kingsley, and it directly feeds the attention Lord Castlereagh is getting now."

"Trust me, we know," he said morosely. "Is Luna back home again, by the way?"

"You want to talk to her about this?" she asked, nodding at the magazine. "No, she's still in Ecuador as far as I know. I haven't heard from her in ages, though."

"I got a letter from her a week or two ago," he said. "She said she had a brilliant idea as she was climbing a volcano called Chimborazo there, something about how the magical animals were all connected somehow."

"We'll no doubt read about it when she gets back, then," she said, still with that twinge of annoyance at their eccentric friend, even after all those years. "Anyway, lunchtime is over."

"Could I keep the magazine for a bit?"

"Of course."

He leafed through it on his way back to his office. Fortunately, the conspiracy theories cooked up by Xenophilius Lovegood were too outlandish to be believable. But the man had nonetheless laid out perfectly what everyone's role was in the Minister's inner circle, and it crept on his nerves.

Sometime later that week, just before he entered the Auror office to start the day, Harry thought he saw Castlereagh and his well-dressed consorts disappear around the corner. Pondering the appearance of the Wizengamot prominent in this part of the Ministry, he didn't notice Craig Robertson waiting for him at the door to his office.

"Morning, Potter," he said conversationally, dragging him back to the present.

"Oh, morning. D'you have any news?"

"Let's discuss it in your office," he said, glancing at passers-by in the hallway.

"Good idea," Harry said, ushering them both inside.

"It's been a while since you've had any updates. How's it going?" Harry asked as they sat down in the leather chairs opposite each other. Robertson took off his worn blazer while Harry grabbed a notebook.

"Frustrating, but that doesn't matter now," the old man said, enthusiasm dripping from his voice. "I think I found a way to contact Yaxley."

Harry's head snapped up from the notebook. "How?" he demanded. A tingle of excitement sparked to life in his stomach.

"I followed a lead to Peckham. There's a pub there, run by non-Hogwarts-goers. Proper sleazy, run down, hidden away in a dark alley, you know the deal. They say he was spotted there a couple weeks ago."

"Of course it's in Peckham," he commented, hastily scribbling down the details. "Go on."

"I went there, singled out a regular who was completely out of it. Charmed him when no one was looking, followed him home, and asked him about Yaxley. Are you gonna file this, by the way?"

"Depends," Harry said carefully, scratching his quickly-growing stubbly beard. "Why?"

"I might've used the Imperius Curse on the bloke."

"Then let's not write that down. What did he say?"

"Said he saw him a couple times. Better yet, he thinks he'll come back again," he said, sounding just as excited as Harry felt. "This is it, Potter! We've got him!"

He lost control over his arms and slapped the desk in ecstasy. "Bloody hell Robertson, you genius!" he exclaimed. "We'll have to look at what to do with this now. In fact, I'll do that right away." He stopped writing and looked up at the man in front of him. "You're a bloody genius," he repeated. "Take the day off, I'd say. Spend some time with the missus."

"I think I might head off to that fancy restaurant in our street," he mused. "Assuming it'll be on the cost of the Ministry?"

"I'll see to it," he said merrily. "Thank you, Craig. You have no idea how much of a blessing this is."

"I don't think I want to, if I'm honest with you. But thank you, Harry. Have a good day."

"You too!"

He replayed the conversation in his mind as he marched through the Ministry halls towards Kingsley's office. After a quick word with the secretary, and much urging that this could not wait, he stepped inside. His eyes grew wide when he saw Castlereagh standing in the middle of the office, gesturing wildly at Kingsley, who sat in his chair with his arms crossed. Conversation between the lord and a clearly irritated Kingsley halted as they both turned to Harry.

"What is the meaning of this?" Castlereagh demanded. "Auror Potter, this is a closed meeting, so I demand you leave until we're finished."

"Actually, Lord Castlereagh, I believe we _were_ just finished," Kingsley said. "Thank you for your time, and I will consider your offer."

Castlereagh closed his mouth, his thick beard bristling at the dismissal. He then swerved around on the spot, jacket billowing around him, and stalked out of the room.

"Thank you, Harry, for that interruption," Kingsley said. "Have a seat."

"What was that all about?"

"A proposal for peaceful transition of power," the man said tiredly. "He didn't like my answer. But enough of that, what brings you here?"

"Oh," he said, dragging his thoughts back away from the politician. "Did you read _The Quibbler_?"

"You're the third to ask today," he said, accepting the magazine from Harry. "But I never thought I'd one day be the target of Xeno's conspiracies. Let's see here; the galvanism is rubbish of course, and so is this secret deal between an Austrian minister and us to exterminate all the last remaining Snorkacks living in Europe. But it does worry me how he knows exactly who my contacts are."

"I thought _Harry the Henchman Head Auror_ was a bit over-the-top," he supplied.

"Obviously. But how did he know our eyes within the conservative wing of the Wizengamot? We're lucky it's _The Quibbler_ , otherwise we might've lost our only eyes in those circles." He closed the paper. "Anyway, I can't imagine this is the only thing that brought you here."

"No, I saved the best for last," Harry said. "You're not gonna believe this, Kingsley, but we've found Yaxley."

"What?!" the man roared, veering up. "How? Where?"

"Robertson found a bloke in Peckham who saw him in a pub a few times. He thinks he might return there soon."

"Incredible," Kingsley breathed after a short pause. "Peckham, of all places. We should have monitored those kind of pockets of magicals more, but that doesn't matter now. Thank you, Harry."

"Thank Robertson," he replied. "By the way, I told him he could have dinner on the Ministry's cost."

"He could order fifteen hookers and a bucket of coke on our budget and I still wouldn't care," Kingsley stated. "But really, thank you. I'll handle it from here. Do expect a message tomorrow from me."

"Alright," Harry said. The slightly ominous implications didn't damper his excitement, but later that day, as he came home and snogged Ginny senseless on the couch, he still felt the foreboding feeling niggling at the back of his mind.


	11. Chapter 10

Kingsley's message was already there in his inbox when he arrived at work the next morning. That Sunday, he found himself staring somewhat perplexed at the contents to the envelope as he queued up for the skybox of Puddlemere United's Quidditch stadium. He was supposed to attend this match, the first match of the season, with Ginny, like they used to do before they first broke up. But Kingsley insisted on taking Harry to a private skybox, undoubtedly with the intention of discussing Yaxley without drawing attention.

"Tickets, please," the guard said as Harry shuffled toward him. He showed the slip Kingsley had given him, and after a brief search (the guard didn't notice the wand strapped to his left arm), he was allowed to enter. He climbed the intricate maze of scaffolding and stairs as crowd noise echoed through the inner stadium. His stairway, though, led to the separated zone of the stands, and was nearly deserted. He soon reached the top, and opened one of the doors to his left.

An explosion of crowd noise greeted him, as well as Kingsley turning around to face him.

"Harry!" he exclaimed. "Good to see you. Come, join me."

Harry sat down next to him with trepidation and glanced around the stadium. They were separated from the crowd all around and above them only by charmwork. It was as if the supporters were right next to them, and Harry could hear them loud and clear. Only those outside of their bubble couldn't hear what was being said inside the skybox. Their seats were almost two-thirds of the way up the impossibly tall wall of seats and stands. All around the field he saw people make their way to their designated seats. The stands at the far end, behind the home team's goal posts, were a sea of flags, dancing, and crude songs insulting the opponents, particularly Appleby Arrows' star chaser, Benedict Moore.

" _Benedict Moore, Benedict Moore; his dad washes pigsties, his mum is a whore!"_ echoed through the stadium.

"Those songs get better each year, don't they?" he asked Kingsley. The man grinned in response and handed him a pint from the minibar behind them. Harry took it with some reluctance, rather wishing that he could share one in the family box at the other end of the stadium, with Ginny and the other Weasleys that had been able to attend.

"We're not here to watch the game, I suppose," he said.

"Of course we are!" Kingsley said. "We have a lot to talk about, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the game as well. Look, there come the teams."

The fourteen players flew out of the tunnels and were greeted by an explosion of cheers and boos around the stadium. The commentator announced their names (cheers for every Puddlemere player, boos for the Arrows), and after a not-too-friendly handshake between the captains, the match began.

It turned out Puddlemere hadn't had a good summer. Harry practically cringed at the disjointed state of their three Chasers and the hopelessly lost impression their new Seeker made. He commended their Beaters' enthusiasm for hurting the opponents, but the Arrows were far too nimble and dodged every Bludger. All too soon, it was 0-40 for the Arrows. Even Oliver Wood, Puddlemere's keeper and Harry's former teammate, couldn't do much to stop the onslaught, and Benedict Moore replied to the insulting chants by scoring one of the quickest hat tricks in years.

"So, about Yaxley," Kingsley said when it became evident the match wasn't going to be much of a nail biter. "I've been thinking the past few days on how we should use this opportunity. I don't think we should wait for him at the pub, or try to set some type of trap for him. He's escaped those many times before."

"Agreed," Harry said, taking a swig of his pint. "So we have to find another way to trick him. Any ideas?"

"A few. Here's what I was thinking…"

Things did not get better for Puddlemere. They scored three consolation goals, but that was of little comfort for the fans, who had to witness their team fall behind so far that not even catching the Snitch would allow them a win. No one believed that the terrified boy circling high above the stadium would have a chance at finding it, anyway.

"I want to ask you about the two suspects for Ollivander's murder," Kingsley said as the supporters around them enthusiastically started a chorus of _"We're Fucking Shit."_ "Julie le Clé and Gerard Bonham. What do you think of them?"

"Bonham is simply a rude, slightly racist jeweller. I really don't think he did it. He has no motive, and the crime scene didn't fit his character at all. He's not that sophisticated."

"And Julie?"

Harry sighed and laid his chin in his hands. "She cheated on me," he said. "I don't think she's that savage, that she would torture and murder Ollivander like that. She also doesn't have a motive. Nor does she have the magical skill to break into Hogwarts and get out without being detected. She's strong, and a wicked dueller, but she's not _that_ adept. But I thought I knew her back then, when we were together, and then she stabbed me in the back like that."

"But do you think she did it?"

Harry took a while to come to a conclusion as another Quaffle slipped through Oliver's fingers after a quick combination between the Arrows' Chasers. "No," he said. And as soon as he said it, he was sure of it. "No, she didn't do it."

"Alright," Kingsley said. "When we catch Yaxley, then, I want to expose him as the killer."

"I suspect him of killing Bilfy and Ollivander, but it's only a hunch. You know that, right?" He noticed the Arrows' Seeker dive downward.

"I do," Kingsley said, watching the Puddlemere Seeker desperately chase his opponent across the stadium.

"You know what you're getting into here, then?"

"Perfectly clear. This is going to happen."

Harry kept his words to himself.

"Is he going to overtake him?" he asked in wonderment as the Puddlemore seeker suddenly gained an unbelievable amount of speed.

"Looks like it."

"I think he's gonna do it!"

And the boy, George Smith, barely seventeen years old, did it. He overtook the Arrows' Seeker, slapped his opponent's outstretched hand away and caught the snitch with a conviction no one thought he had in him. Cheers erupted all around the stadium, followed immediately by whistles and boos. The snitch was merely a consolation prize, as they still lost by an embarrassing margin.

* * *

It was unusually warm on the day they confronted Yaxley. The sun shone brightly, and the strong sea breeze, normally ever-present on the English coasts, was absent. The dilapidated streets, abandoned homes and filthy buildings stood silent in the languid summer day. Jaywick, just outside Clacton-on-Sea, had been originally built as a low-cost holiday destination for Londoners. The town had long since wasted away and these days it was better known as one of the worst places to live in Britain. Children could vaguely be heard playing further down the street, a sound that felt out of place in a miserable town like this. He felt like an intruder here, even though there wasn't a person in sight. It couldn't possibly look or feel further from the well-off neighbourhood Andy and Teddy lived in.

"This is worse than Knockturn Alley used to be," Harry said.

"I prefer a run-down town over that vermin's nest, if I'm honest," Kingsley replied. "Skint smack addicts are much easier to deal with."

"When's the last time you've been in a place this filthy, Minister?" Harry said, grinning at the man beside him.

"Oh, ages ago," he said. "I've been told that this is below me now. But I guess that's why he picked this place."

"Yeah."

The plan was as perfect as it could be. Yaxley wouldn't be swayed to come to this meeting if there wasn't something in it for him. That's why Harry and Kingsley focused on the man's only weakness: his arrogance. They sent a carefully-crafted letter to Peckham, in it admitting defeat and offering the Death Eater permanent extradition. The letter had arrived at its destination as expected, and Yaxley's reply had come quickly, dripping with self-satisfied acceptance. They would meet at his desired location, make a vow, and then he'd disappear forever with an officially-sanctioned (but secret) Portkey to his exile in Omsk.

What the man didn't know, however, was that there was a team of Aurors waiting a few streets away, ready to strike at Harry's call.

Their boots, completely unsuited for the warm weather, made heavy footfalls on the litter-filled streets while they ambled towards their destination, and broken glass crunched beneath them as they passed abandoned homes, barred windows, and broken toys. Offensive slurs and failed attempts at swastikas decorated the building fronts, and only added to Harry's growing unease. He did his best to ignore them and focus on the task at hand.

"Here we are," he said, pointing at a particularly filthy house. The garden was walled off with a crumbling brick fence, and what he saw of the upper floor of the building looked like it could collapse on its own at any minute. Nevertheless, he pushed open what was left of the front gate, which in effect meant that he let the remaining rotted wooden planks fall to the ground.

"I'm too old for this," Kingsley muttered as he stepped through, Harry following him closely. They drew their wands simultaneously and quickly made their way across the small yard and inside the house. Kingsley had been Minister for many years now, but he still moved with the practiced care of a veteran Auror, ready to strike at any moment. Harry tried to swallow the dry feeling in his throat away as they stepped through the rotting doorway and through the small rooms of what had once been a quaint holiday home.

They found a narrow and steep stairway that led into the dark attic, and he motioned for Kingsley to get behind him. He paused one last time to calm his breathing, and then he started up the stairs.

The creaking of the wooden staircase was deafening against the eerie silence as he climbed the final steps and entered the darkness of the upper floor. The only light came in through the many holes in the walls and roof. Amidst those small, bright rays of sunlight he could make out a dark shape at the end of the room. Kingsley appeared alongside him again and pointed his wand at it.

"So you came," the figure said.

"I think you'll find that we honour our promises, Yaxley," Harry said.

"It seems so, Potter," Corban Yaxley replied. "And what an honour to meet you as well, Minister." He stood up from his chair and lit his wand. Even though he'd been on the run from the authorities for the past thirteen years, he still carried himself with that old air of dignity: arrogant eyes, overly ornamental clothing, and the odd jewellery here and there to further cement his supposed place at the top of society. Nothing about it suggested that he had lost his home, his fortune, and his standing. His long hair, though, had lost the final strands of colour, and his hardened face showed a lot more weariness than when Harry had last seen him. But that manic gleam in his eyes was still there.

"You've gotten old," Harry commented.

"And you've become a man. Do I spot a beard?"

"Missus likes it."

Yaxley grinned. "I don't blame her. Does she know we're here?"

"I made a promise," Harry repeated. "No one knows about this other than the minister and me. We'll keep this under wraps."

"You have my word, Corban," Kingsley added.

"I reckon I should trust the words of a pair of Gryffindors. Morals over intellect. Now, show me the Portkey."

"Oh I have it on me, don't worry," Harry said.

"And I want you to show it to me," Yaxley repeated.

Harry and Kingsley exchanged a look.

"If you insist," Harry said. He reached into the inner pocket of his robes and pulled a battered, old tube of lipstick from it.

"Closer, Potter."

Harry took one step forward.

" _Closer_ , please _._ My eyes are not what they used to be."

Harry hesitated, but again stepped a bit closer towards the Death Eater.

"I want to inspect the thing before we continue, Potter. Hold it out for me."

Harry extended his left hand with the Portkey as he raised his wand in the other.

"Any wrong move, and I blast you through that wall," Kingsley warned.

Yaxley, though, didn't move his gaze from the lipstick. He drew his wand, a short, thick one, decorated with thin, organically-shaped silver lines along its entire length, and muttered a few incantations. He was apparently satisfied, because he lowered his wand, and a smile lacking any warmth crept onto his wrinkled face.

"Excellent," he said. He waved his wand, and two more chairs appeared. "Now, let's talk for a moment."

Harry raised his brow at the ornamental, comfortable looking seats as Yaxley sunk into his chair again. "That won't be necessary. We just want your Vow, and then we're out."

"And I'm not giving you one until we've had a talk, Potter. Now sit down. Both of you."

Harry sank down into the lush sofa after Kingsley and made to put the lipstick back into his pocket, but Yaxley interrupted. "No, not so fast. Give me the lipstick first."

"Not a chance."

"This is very simple, Potter. I've got nothing to lose, and you have everything to gain, so don't make this harder for all of us. Deal, or no deal. The choice is yours."

Harry considered his options for a moment, but his mind screamed against handing him the Portkey too soon.

"Just give him the Portkey, Harry," Kingsley said. Harry hesitated, but against his better judgement he fished out the lipstick again and placed it into the Death Eater's outstretched hand.

"See?" he said. "It's not that difficult."

"Your tastes didn't change over time," Harry commented, hoping to change the subject.

"You'll find that class is permanent," Yaxley said, stroking the lapel of his luxuriously black jacket. "Besides, I figured the Minister for Magic deserved a bit of extravagance. I'm sure you don't mind, Shacklebolt."

Kingsley said nothing, to Yaxley's visible disappointment.

"Right, then, let's get down to business. Because ever since you first contacted me, I've kept on wondering what led to the decision to let me go free. You have, shall we say, piqued my curiosity."

"You know why, and I'm not repeating it just to please you," Harry said.

"I'd have thought you'd be more patient here," Yaxley said. "One small, friendly conversation, and you'll never see me again. That can't be hard to bear, can it? Grant an old man his pleasures, please."

"Frankly, Death Eater," Kingsley said, his tone hard, his jaws clenched, "my patience with you ran out a long time ago. You've been on the run from us for years now, and your disgusting little pillage has left too many bodies and too much misery in your wake. This isn't an appeasement or us coming to terms in any way; it's just a way of guaranteeing the safety of our citizens by getting rid of the last remnant of your master's filth."

Yaxley chuckled. "Always the righteous. Some things really don't change. You know, Shacklebolt, I still remember telling you all that time ago that you couldn't catch me. It's good to see who came out on top in the end, isn't it?"

Kingsley didn't comment on that, and Harry was happy to see him reign his emotions in somewhat. He was surprised the Death Eater had even agreed to meet them here after the long game of shadows he'd played. Losing one's temper only because of some simple gloating would only ruin the plan.

"Anything else, then, before we make the Vow?" Harry asked. "Life in sunny Russia is waiting for you."

"No, by all means, let's get this done! I suppose you two have an awful lot of other things to do today after all. Not in the least explaining to the Russian Ministry why you sent a Death Eater to their country."

He stood up, Harry and Kingsley followed.

"Have you done a Vow before, Potter?" Yaxley asked.

"I've done loads for the Ministry," Harry replied.

"Oh, I don't mean those stuffy old vows. No, my friend, I'm talking about a real Unbreakable Vow. The trick with them is that _you've got to mean it_ , if you catch my drift."

"I've done a few Unbreakable Vows," Kingsley interjected. "Don't worry. I know what I'm doing."

"That's reassuring," Yaxley said, though his gaze never left Harry's.

He timidly wondered how the man knew to find his weak spots so well.

Harry and Yaxley then pulled up their sleeves and clasped their right hands together, their eyes boring into each other as Harry kept on repeating _"you've got to mean it"_ in his head.

Kingsley then took position next to them, his wand hovering above their grasped hands.

"Corban Abraham Alexander Yaxley, do you swear to never return to Great Britain or Ireland ever again?" Lights shot from Kingsley's wand and swirled around their wrists.

"I do." Yaxley still stared intently into Harry's eyes, as if daring him to look away.

"And do you swear to never murder another person ever again?" Another light shot from the wand and spiralled around their arms.

"I do."

Then Kingsley turned to Harry.

"Harry James Potter, will you swear to stop your attempts to arrest him?"

Harry's eyes started tearing up from keeping them open so long, but he refused to break eye contact.

"I will," he slowly said.

Yaxley's feral grin widened as he shifted his grip slightly. The two spirals of light coiled tighter, and Harry felt the magic fusing into his skin. The sudden searing feeling made him finally look away, and he let go of the Death Eater's hand.

"It is done," Kingsley said quietly. "The Portkey will activate with a tap of your wand. Mind the landing, it can be a bit rougher than normal."

"Just one more thing, gentlemen," Yaxley said.

"Yes?" Kingsley said impatiently.

"Before I leave you for all eternity, there was actually one last thing I wanted to talk about with you, Harry," he said. Harry looked up from his hand, which still tingled oddly. "Specifically, it's about your wand."

"My wand?" Harry asked, holding up his wand with a carefully managed straight face. "It's just a wand, what about it?"

"No, no, not that one," Yaxley said. "I think you know what I'm talking about. Is it strapped to your left arm at the moment?" Harry didn't manage to hide his shock completely, and he subconsciously fingered the second wand bound to his left arm.

"What's he talking about, Harry?" Kingsley demanded, looking from the Death Eater to him.

"It is, isn't it?" Yaxley asked. "Why on earth wouldn't you use it? Such power, wasted..."

"Me and the old wand get along well enough," Harry said neutrally.

"Stop this bloody nonsense and let's get out of here!" Kingsley said.

"I'm sure you do. You defeated the Dark Lord with it, after all," Yaxley said, ignoring Kingsley's growing impatience. "So does this mean that the Minister doesn't know, then? Oh, dear!" He sat back down in his plush sofa and put his arms behind his head.

"Know what?"

"Nothing!" Harry blurted.

"The Elder Wand!" Yaxley said loudly, clearly enjoying this. "Potter managed to get himself the Wand of Death a few months ago. He's been carrying it around ever since."

"Is this true?" Kingsley said. "Harry, tell me."

Not trusting his voice at the moment, Harry pulled up the sleeve of his left arm instead, and tapped the wand strap with his holly wand, undoing the Invisibility Charm.

Kingsley gasped when he saw the Elder Wand revealed. "How?" he demanded, staring at it intently. "I thought you broke it after the Battle of Hogwarts?"

"You can't break it, apparently," Harry said, avoiding looking at Kingsley. "It was at the bottom of the Black Lake all that time, and I found it last spring."

"When you crashed into the lake during that helicopter fight?"

"Yeah."

"Does anyone else know?"

"No. No one."

"Not even those Weasleys and that Mudblood friend of yours?" Yaxley asked.

Harry said nothing.

"Tut tut, Harry," Yaxley said, interpreting Harry's silence correctly. He hadn't stood up during the exchange, and looked completely relaxed in his chair. "Lying to the love of your life for months, that's low. Really, who's the dishonourable one here?"

"How do you know all these things?" Harry asked. He took the Elder Wand into his right hand, and aimed it at Yaxley, for the first time seriously considering using it.

The Death Eater simply smiled. "Why on earth would you want to know that? I'll be gone for good in a minute, won't I? Tell you what though," he lazily stretched his limbs, "it's a good thing you didn't warn the backup down the street before our little conversation, isn't it? _That_ would've been awkward."

Kingsley sprang into action at that revelation, and sent a stunner at the Death Eater. At the same time, Harry pressed the caller in his pocket, sending the warning signal to the nearby Aurors. Yaxley lazily blocked Kingsley's spell, leapt over his chair, and jumped out of the window, right before the Aurors popped into existence in the attic.

"No!" Harry shouted. He Apparated outside the building, wand at the ready, and desperately looking around for any sign of Yaxley, but he was already gone.

Aghast, he turned toward his colleagues exiting the building, just in time remembering to switch wands again.

"He's gone," he said.

"What happened?" Proudfoot asked.

"Bastard knew of our plan all along," Kingsley said, coming out of the front door as well. "He distracted us and disappeared."

"Did you get the Vow done?"

"Yeah, that we did. And"—the Minister pulled a small device from his pocket, which emitted a green light—"it looks like he used the Portkey."

"So he's gone then?"

"We didn't catch him," Harry said morosely, avoiding Ron's questioning gaze.

"But to answer you question," Kingsley supplied, "yeah, he made the Vow. The bastard's gone. The moment he sets foot in Britain, he dies."

That brought a subdued cheer from the crowd, but Harry felt Kingsley's intense gaze on him. He had fucked up.

* * *

The door slammed shut behind him as Kingsley stomped into the office.

"Kingsley –" he began, unsure of whether to sit down or stand behind the chair.

"Just keep your mouth shut," Kingsley snarled, pacing behind his desk. "You let him escape. I should fire you on the spot."

Harry felt his stomach drop down a trapdoor.

"I trusted you from the beginning," he continued, rubbing his bald brown head in agitation. "We rid the Auror office of Voldemort's supporters, we filled Azkaban to the brim with old Death Eaters and snatchers, and I made you the youngest Head Auror in centuries. And in return for that trust you go around my back to keep that thing hidden from me."

"Why do you care about the Elder Wand?" Harry asked, watching the Minister as he continued his pacing.

"He had you, _us_ , by the balls because of that thing! He put us on the spot, and he used that to escape. I'd have appreciated it if you told me about this beforehand."

"I didn't know he knew about the Elder Wand!" Harry protested. "How could I? I haven't told anyone about it, not even Ginny!"

That finally seemed to crack through Kingsley's fury. "Did he spy on you, then?" he asked.

"He'd have to possess impossible magical skills to do so. My house is under the Fidelius, and the Wand itself is under my strongest obscuring charms."

Kingsley stopped pacing, and he gripped the back of his chair. "Too many secrets," he mumbled, for a moment looking lost to the world. Then he looked up at Harry and met his eye. "Show it to me."

"Sorry?" Harry asked.

"It's time you stopped covering that wand up," he said. "Go on."

Harry hesitated for a moment, and then he cancelled the obscuring charms on his holster and unsheathed the Elder Wand.

"Put it down on the desk, please," Kingsley said evenly, his anger barely contained, "and explain to me how you got it in the first place."

Harry obliged. He wasn't sure if it was his imagination, but the torches illuminating the Ministerial office seemed to dim somewhat in the presence of the Wand of Death. Kingsley's furious gaze made way for a more cautious one as he began explaining.

"It happened on the day that madman Savage kidnapped me," he said mutely. "Ginny helped me escape, and we ended up in a car, chased around the forest by that deranged American billionaire and his helicopter, and that's when the other Aurors arrived. Like I told you in the briefing, I shot the pilot, but Ginny got shot as well before that. We lost control of the car and flew off the road and into the Black Lake."

"Then you got both of you out of the car, you swam the shore, healed her and then Ron arrived?"

"That's the official story," he said, mirroring Kingsley and leaning over the back of his chair. It felt good, he thought, to finally share this story with someone. "I lost consciousness when we hit the water, but when I woke up, I was in some sort of cave. Ginny was there as well, but she was unconscious, and dying. And then this woman appeared from nowhere, and she told me she was a water goddess."

"Right."

Harry stopped his tale when Kingsley summoned two glasses and a bottle of whisky. They watched in silence as he filled the glasses with the amber-coloured liquor.

"I think we'll need it. Drink up," he ordered. Harry took the glass and emptied it in one swig.

"Just after we won the Battle of Hogwarts, I broke the Elder Wand in two and threw it off the big bridge into the lake," he continued as Kingsley refilled their glasses. "The goddess told me it had repaired itself, and that it had started attracting the Grindylows and other Dark creatures."

"That's why they all disappeared after that day," Kingsley interjected.

"Yeah. She said the Elder Wand was the only thing that could save Ginny. So I had no other choice, basically. I took it, healed her, and then I woke up in the car again."

Kingsley sank down in his black leather chair and ceremoniously emptied his second glass.

"What a story, right?" Harry asked, a nervous chuckle escaping his throat.

Kingsley sighed. "It's a fantastic tale. I suppose in our world it isn't too outlandish. But why didn't you tell anyone about this?"

"I didn't do it for fun. You've heard the history of this wand. It attracts trouble…"

"So you wanted to shield the others from that."

"Yeah."

Kingsley stood up as quickly as he'd sat down and resumed his pacing. "I did not expect such a childish thing from you," he said. "Ten years ago, maybe, but you're thirty-one now."

"Was it not the right thing to do?" Harry challenged.

"Where has all that secrecy led you to?" Kingsley countered. "Yaxley got away, you've gone against everything an Auror would've done… and I don't think Ginny will be all to pleased when she hears about this."

"I would be fighting off assassination attempts every day if I revealed that I had the Elder Wand," Harry said, fighting the urge to join Kingsley in his nervous trot. "I would've been dead in a few months, and maybe my friends as well."

"Are you playing dumb on purpose? For God's sake, Harry, I'm not saying you had to shout it from the rooftops!" Kingsley exclaimed. "And, was it not the right thing to do, you asked? Perhaps, but you gave Yaxley a window to escape."

"That's unfair, and you know it. I couldn't have known that he knew about the Wand."

"But he wouldn't have caught us with our pants down if you'd told me before we stepped into that room that you had the bloody Elder Wand strapped to your arm!"

Harry had no reply. They were going nowhere with this. He knew he was in the wrong. He'd known it for months, maybe even from the moment he first took the wand. He suppressed a shudder when he thought back to the times he'd lied to Ginny. The question of what the hell he was doing came up in him, just like it did every time. But the same old answer, the excuse of keeping others safe, it didn't suffice anymore.

"We're just moving in circles here," he concluded.

"We are." Kingsley sighed.

"What do you want to do now?"

"Now we make a statement about Yaxley," he said shortly.

"And the wand?"

"If I were you, I'd go home right now and confess to Ginny, but…"

"It's just one more secret to add to our list?"

Kingsley deflated before Harry's very eyes. "I'm a hypocrite," he said.

"No more than me," Harry said.

Kingsley pressed his lips together. Then he grabbed the crystal bottle and refilled their glasses.

"You look tired lately," he commented.

"Really?" Harry said, surprised at the sudden change of topic.

"Yes, really. Have you been sleeping well?"

He stared at Kingsley, wondering what he should say. "To be honest…" he said slowly. "I've been having nightmares lately. I think these murders are getting to me a bit. So it should be over, now that we've gotten rid of Yaxley."

"Are you sure of that?"

Harry didn't know what that question referred to. "Yes," he said, feeling that was the only response he _could_ give.

"And are you sure we got the right person?"

"Yes."

"Good. Then take care of yourself, Harry," Kingsley said. "I don't think I would've been able to do this job for so long if I didn't have you as my partner."

"Thank you." There was something niggling at the back of his mind, and Yaxley's gaze as they made the Vow was still burned in his retina. But he couldn't think straight at the moment.


	12. Chapter 11

Their conversation coursed through Harry's head the rest of the day. Ron had the courage to ask him what went wrong, but the occurrences were far too fresh in his mind, and he'd told him off.

"Later, Ron," he'd ground out. "I've got important things to do. Here, look at this stack of papers." He'd picked them up and dropped them back down on the desk with a loud _thud_ that probably reverberated into the next room. "I need to read all of this today, and _then_ I need to assess whether or not Ghezzal and Proudfoot used excessive force when they arrested a bloke called Mickey Pokey, who stole Dung Bombs from Zonko's and threw them into his neighbour's bedroom, which was revenge for, I quote, _"making a love-heart-shaped toilet window facing my garden"_! So would you _please_ just leave me alone? I need to concentrate."

No one knocked on his door the rest of the day.

Ginny had an autograph-signing session with the team that evening. He did the laundry, which she was supposed to be doing, and ate by himself. Fork and knife on either side of his plate, the Elder Wand in front of it on the table. He spent his dinner staring at it, wondering how a small stick could cause so much trouble. After eating too much of the green beans with minced meat, and drinking more wine than he should, he strapped his Elder Wand into the obscuring holster again, and picked up his dishes.

And threw his plate to the ground.

He stopped in his tracks and stared in confusion at the mess of white porcelain lying in pieces at his feet.

"Why…"

He didn't know. The burst of white-hot anger had come from seemingly nowhere, but the feeling had pierced through his inhibition before he knew it.

He was about to grab his wand when an idea struck him. He set his glass back down on the table, careful not to step on any shards, and then slowly unholstered the Elder Wand again.

He pointed it at the dark wooden floor in front of him, and whispered " _Reparo_ ". A jolt went through his stomach, much like when he suddenly dipped his broom into a steep dive downward, and finally, _finally_ , a beam of light shot out of the end of the wand. Pieces of the plate floated up, sorted themselves in mid-air, and melted together again before his eyes. He took the gently-floating, newly-repaired plate in his hand. One small shard was missing, but otherwise it was as good as new.

Realization set in. The tingling feeling of elation started in the tips of his toes, and spread all the way throughout his body. He unceremoniously dumped his dishes into the sink and rushed upstairs, to the attic.

" _Accio!"_ he cried as soon as he reached the top of the stairs. The cardboard box he pointed his wand at sailed into his hands.

 _"Wingardium leviosa!"_ It sailed up into the air. A barking laugh escaped him.

Every spell he tried, worked. Just for a moment, he could forget about what had happened that day, and he lost himself in the joyous feeling of success. He made the previously motionless doll dance a jig on its dusty shelf and rock a rocking horse back and forth, the spiderwebs on the handles swaying back and forth in the rhythm. Such was his joy at getting the Elder Wand to work that he forgot to tell Ginny what had happened that day when she came home later that night.

* * *

He was in a forest again, but this time, it felt different from the woods he'd found himself in when dreaming about Remus. The trees were thicker here, the shadows darker. Moss covered immense branches, algae-covered ponds surrounded fallen tree trunks, and he couldn't see the night sky through the impenetrable maze of leaves high above. Again, his legs acted on their own accord, carrying him deeper into the shadows.

He didn't belong here. Giant roots stuck out, reaching from the cold, muddy ground to try and catch his legs, and even walking as slowly as he was, was treacherous. The green pools of water looked no different from solid ground, and no one would find him if he fell in. The algae, the mush of dead leaves and mud, and the moss-covered thickets would serve to make his submerged body disappear completely.

But he, or rather whatever controlled his legs, found the way, walking, stumbling through the ancient woods. Something attracted him, pulled him in closer. He felt its magnetic force in every fibre of his body, and it got stronger with every step. Where previously he wanted to stop his legs from moving, he now wanted to give in to that tingling pull and start running. But just when he thought he was going mad from the restriction, he reached a small clearing. It was, if possible, even darker here than elsewhere in the woods, even though he should have been able to see the clear sky here. But it was as if something was sucking the light from this world as he approached the centre of the clearing. The shadows beyond the trees were impenetrable, yet they appeared to be moving, teeming like a bug's nest.

He reached the mossy centre. He kneeled down, and his hands started to dig through the wet moss, mud, and pebbles. There, covered in dirt, he found whatever had incurred his frenzy. A small stone, strangely heavy and impossibly black, seeming to draw the light from around him with its ancient power.

The Resurrection Stone.

* * *

He woke up. The first thing he did was glance under the blanket at his hands, to see if the stone was still there in his hands. It wasn't. He breathed out and stared at the ceiling, eyes wide open and mind working at full speed as the pieces started to connect.

Savage's words: _"Someone's searching for the Deathly Hallows."_ His strange attraction to the Wand of Death, and his eerily vivid dreams about Remus and Sirius, the ones he'd summoned all those years ago when he'd walked to Voldemort to meet his end. The only ones missing so far, he now realized with a start, were his parents.

He threw the blankets off, put on his glasses and a bathrobe, and snuck downstairs. Lying still was impossible at this point; too much adrenaline coursed through his veins. As he flicked on the lights of the living room, he briefly considered Flooing to Ron and Hermione's, but he just barely decided against it.

 _So this is what it's all about_ , he thought as he began to frantically pace around the dinner table. The Deathly Hallows. The foreboding implication that someone else knew about this, and that that someone was looking for them, barely even passed by his thoughts. All he could think about was that strange, dark clearing in the Forbidden Forest. The Resurrection Stone was somewhere out there, and he was going to find it. But his fatigue put a halt to his maelstrom of thoughts. Tomorrow, he vowed. Tomorrow he would start searching.

"Harry?"

Ginny's voice broke through his introspections, and he turned to look at her as she entered the living room. Her face was etched with worry, and when their eyes met, she took a step backward.

"Ginny," he said in trepidation. "I didn't know you were up."

"I heard the stairs," she said, still frozen in the door opening. "Are you alright?"

"Nightmare."

"Oh baby," she said, now finally approaching him. "I'll get the Dreamless Sleep potion."

"No, I don't think–"

She silenced him with a kiss.

"Just let me take care of you," she said softly, affection clear in her eyes. "You need it."

He rubbed his eyes tiredly. "S'pose you're right," he said. "Where is it?"

"It's in one of the cupboards. Hang on, I'll get it – OW!" she suddenly shouted, grabbing her left foot in her hands.

"What happened?" he asked, hurrying to her side.

"Something… sharp," she breathed, hopping around on one leg. He grabbed her by the waist and guided her to a chair.

" _Lumos,"_ he said. They both stared at her foot sole.

"It's a shard or something," she said, reaching for the wound. Blood pooled up from it and dripped down her foot. She pinched something between her finger and thumb, and with a quick tug, it was out.

"A plate shard?" she wondered aloud as Harry quickly healed her foot. "Did you break something?

"Err, yeah," he said, trying to hide his discomfort from her. "I dropped my plate this evening."

"Idiot. Didn't you see there was something missing when you repaired it?"

"Obviously not, did I?" he bit out.

Ginny let out a frustrated sigh. "Whatever. Get me something to clean this with, will you?"

He quickly grabbed a cloth, and as they cleaned up the blood from her foot and the floor, she asked the question he'd been dreading for a long time.

"Are you hiding something from me?"

"What makes you think that?" he said, hoping his surprise sounded genuine.

"Dunno," she said, putting the cloth on the table and meeting his eyes. "You've been stressed lately."

"It's work–"

"Yes, I know it's work," she interrupted. "You're busy enough as it is, and that's without Ollivander's case and whatever you're keeping hidden from everyone outside of the Aurors. But there's something else, isn't there?"

He tried to swallow, but his throat was suddenly too dry.

"I…" He tried to talk, but he'd made lying to her a habit he couldn't break through anymore.

"You can tell me, you know." It was not her inquisitiveness that got to him, it was how fragile she sounded when she said that. Tears threatened to spill over when she gently touched his cheek to bring his gaze back to her. "We're doing so well together. Please, Harry, let me in."

"I…" he croaked. He sniffed and wiped his eyes. "I need to think."

She didn't reply, and that hurt even more. He stood up, but she didn't follow him.

"I'll stay here for a while," she whispered as he walked away from her. "G'night."

"Night, love."

* * *

His run-in with Ginny didn't dampen his determination. He woke up earlier than her, had a quick wash and breakfast, and then he went back to their bedroom. He grabbed his Invisibility Cloak from the closet (hanging between a set of robes and a muggle business suit), kissed Ginny's cheek, careful not to wake her up, and went outside.

But instead of Apparating into the Ministry, he appeared at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, on an unpaved road, a mile or so outside Hogsmeade. He vividly remembered chasing down Maximilien Nott here as the Death Eater tried to escape into the Forbidden Forest. Harry and the other Aurors had had him cornered on this road between the Hogwarts grounds and the steep mountains, but then he had run past the edge of the Forest. Only a well-placed Stunner from Proudfoot had prevented him from disappearing forever.

Now, standing at this very edge, he felt a sense of foreboding creep up his stomach. The transition into the magical woods was visible from miles away, like a cathedral of evergreens towering above the young birch trees. Up close there wasn't a clear border, but once you were inside, you'd know. The shadows become darker, the temperature drops, the air becomes heavier and more moist, and some said you could walk for days without catching a glimpse of the sky above. Creatures seen hardly anywhere else anymore roamed here under the enormous trees: Acromantulas, Centaurs, Unicorns. From the slimy things lurking in the many pools to the bluebirds of happiness frolicking among the foliage, everything here lived without human intervention, in their own eternal dance of life and death. This was the last part of the country unaffected by the British lumber industry, the industry that had wiped out every other forest on this island from the face of the earth. The last piece of primeval forest in Britain, protected by the ancient charms that obscured this area from non-magicals.

The last thing he did was send a short message to the office, telling his Aurors that he'd be a bit late today. Then he took a deep breath, covered himself with the Invisibility Cloak, and began walking.

He should have planned this better, Harry thought as he walked aimlessly through the Forbidden Forest. But he never could think logically at times like this. He just rolled with it, and trusted things to work out in the end. They always had.

But doubts started to creep in as he walked without pause deeper into the forest. He didn't even know the way, nor did he know whether or not McGonagall would be alerted if he entered Hogwarts grounds, even through his trusted Invisibility Cloak. But the thought of finding all three Deathly Hallows filled him with such excitement that he didn't stop to consider those things.

He eventually had to conclude that couldn't find the place where he'd dropped the Resurrection Stone all those years ago. Retracing his steps would probably help him a lot, but he didn't want to arouse suspicion by entering the forest in plain view of the castle. He would need an excuse to do that, he figured.

When lunchtime approached, the time he'd bought today was up. He shook the leaves and twigs from his clothes and apparated into the Ministry.

* * *

As expected, the reactions to forcing Yaxley out of the country were immense. Harry received cautious stares from many people in the cafeteria during lunch, including Hermione and Ron. The press and opposition had had a field day in emphasising that once again, the Minister and his trusted Head Auror had failed to catch the last remaining Death Eater, even with a team of six Aurors as backup. And when news reached the Russian Ministry for Magic, a diplomatic crisis loomed.

" _This is yet another violation of international law, and a direct attack against our sovereign nation,"_ a statement from Minister Pavel Petrovich himself read. _"This is an inexcusable act, and mark my words, this will have severe repercussions for the relations between our magical communities."_

"Couldn't you have made a deal with them?" Harry had asked Kingsley when he was yet again summoned to the man's office. "Their Aurors could have set a trap for him at his Portkey location, and then we wouldn't have to deal with this mess on top of everything else."

"I didn't have the time," Kingsley had replied. "Russian Aurors are decentralized and obviously too corrupt to be trusted. And how do you think their Ministry would've reacted to such a proposal? I didn't have a choice, and that's why I chose to trust us to actually be able to catch the bloody Death Eater."

Another _Quibbler_ article on Harry and Kingsley appeared, in which they were accused of trying to start a Jacobin revolution in Russia. Harry vowed to talk to Luna as soon as she got home. But that same day arrived the news that she had decided against coming home. Instead, she planned on travelling from Lima to Washington D.C., presumably to share her findings with the Ministry there. Whatever it was that she was doing, she stayed far away from the troubles here, and he envied her for that.

Somewhere within the pandemonium, he visited McGonagall in her office to talk to her about the Auror patrols now that the threat of the house-elf killer had passed.

"Good morning, Professor," he said as soon as he stepped out of the fireplace.

"Potter," was all she said. With every meeting they had lately, she'd been looking angrier and angrier. He seated himself across her with trepidation.

"I wanted to discuss the Auror patrols here," he said. "Now that Yaxley is in exile, they won't be needed anymore, so I wanted to terminate them."

"Are you absolutely sure it was indeed him?" She asked.

"Yes."

"Why wasn't I informed of how the case was progressing?"

"With all due respect, Professor, we rarely, if ever, do that when it comes to big cases like this one."

"It's my castle!"

"It was a matter of national security," he tersely replied.

"In all my years," she muttered, her hands shaking. "And you're sure he will not return?"

"Absolutely," he said.

"Then take your Aurors and get out. And write your godson, he's had it difficult since the start of the year."

"Thank you Professor."

"Out."

* * *

That evening, he received Teddy's first letter since school started again.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _School's going okay. Friends are doing well, but Émile is constantly sick. Pomfrey thinks it's a virus. McGonagall seems angry all the time. Everything else is normal._

 _Teddy_

His godson was never that eloquent with a pen, but the shortness of the letter, combined with McGonagall's remarks earlier that day, worried him. _Like everything else_ , he thought.

A sudden flood of grief rose up in him, constricting his throat, prickling his eyes. Ginny, sitting with her back to him on a sofa near the fire, reading through her training reports, never saw the tears sliding down his cheeks. He didn't even want her to. He stood up and hurried to the loo. He put down the lid, sat down, and buried his head in his hands, finally letting loose the stream of tears that had been threatening to spill over for so long now. He bit his lip to stop himself from making a sound as he sat on the loo and shook in quiet sobs.

He wanted to break the Elder Wand again. Maybe flush it down the toilet as well while he was here. But he couldn't. Not because he realized it was useless anyway, but because he _couldn't._ The Hallows had him in their grasp. They were in his head, morphing his thoughts into grotesque forms, clouding his judgement, and stealing his sleep. He laid his glasses on the floor and rubbed his eyes in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the tears. It was too much. He couldn't do it anymore, and he was so _cold_.

Ginny didn't come looking, even after he'd been there for what felt like ages. There was too much left unsaid between them, and it was too late to mend it. He'd broken her trust, and any intention of confessing to her about the Deathly Hallows was squashed before it could take root. He was now a prisoner, he knew, firmly in the grasp of those damned artifacts. That thought strangely made it easier to wash his face, put on his glasses, and go to bed, no doubt to be greeted by another nightmare. He had no choice, and that was the only comfort he had.

* * *

He dragged himself into his office the next day, only greeting the others to stop them from becoming too concerned or suspicious about him. He fully intended on ignoring his inbox completely, but a note with the Ministerial seal on it caught his attention. It was another summons from the Minister.

So he trudged through the corridors, finally noticing how awful and joyless the dark floor tiles looked.

"Welcome, Harry," Kingsley said when he entered his office.

"Morning," he grunted, throwing himself into the usual leather chair across from the Minister.

"Is everything alright?"

"Everything is spiffing, thanks."

"Have you told Ginny about the Elder Wand yet?"

"Yeah," he lied.

Kingsley stared at him in surprise, but recovered quickly. "You did the right thing."

Harry shrugged his shoulders.

"Well?" Kingsley then asked. "How'd it go?"

"Why do you think I'm in this mood?" Harry replied. "You messaged me?"

Kingsley mercifully dropped the subject. "I'm considering what to do next," he said. "Now that the murder cases have been solved–yes, I would call them solved –" he added when Harry threw him a doubtful look, "I want to put an end to the slander."

"No chance."

"That's what we said when we first started after the war," Kingsely admonished. "Come, now. I've never seen you this listless. It doesn't suit you."

"Sorry."

"I want you to talk to Xenophilius. See how he's doing, ask him why he's writing all those conspiracies about us."

"That's not my task, is it?"

"Who else do you want me to ask, then?" Kingsely doggedly said.

Harry stopped himself from suggesting the man do it himself, but the absurdity of this order was the first thing that broke through his muddled thoughts this morning.

"You have no idea what you're doing, do you?" he asked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You're sending the Head Auror to talk to the press to try and convince them to stop writing negative things. Kingsley, this isn't us."

"Infighting isn't us either," he bit back. "Damn it, Harry, Castlereagh's gaining power by the minute! It won't be long until we'll have to have early elections, and I don't think I'll win those. We're on the verge of losing it all at this point, so this is not the time to act petulant!"

If he wasn't in this strange, dull mood, Harry would probably have protested more. But he was tired enough as it was, and going against the Minister was not on his bucket list for today.

"I guess I'll go, then," he said, standing up without waiting for Kingsley's reply.

"Thank you," the man said when he reached the door. Harry turned around once, but his intended comment died on his lips. So he left.

* * *

He appeared at the foot of a grassy hill. Looking at the top, he saw the Lovegood home, sticking out against the blue afternoon sky. He remembered the first time he had come here, when he, Ron and Hermione were on the hunt for Voldemort's Horcruxes. Just like then, Harry realized with a start, he had been obsessed with the Deathly Hallows.

It was getting a bit chillier, now that it was already halfway through September, so he closed his crimson robes as he set off uphill. Xenophilius Lovegood had renovated the house after an Erumpant horn had blown the house up that fateful day when Death Eaters had almost caught them. It looked about the same as before, and Ron's comparison to _"a giant rook"_ came to his mind.

The signs next to the gate still read the same as they had all those years ago: _"The Quibbler. Editor: X. Lovegood"_ , _"Pick Your Own Mistletoe"_ , and _"Keep Off the Dirigible Plums"_. He smiled and pushed open the small, rusty gate, walking uphill past the collection of strange-looking plants that grew haphazardly throughout the yard. He saw terracotta shards and pieces of what looked like sandstone lying on the ground in between the blooming bushes and overripe fruit. He wondered if those were the same shards that were sent flying when the house had exploded.

He reached the thick, black door, and knocked with the silver, eagle-shaped knocker.

He heard no sound, and nobody came to the door. He knocked again, and peered around the mistletoe bushes growing on either side of the door, to look in through the small kitchen window. But the glass was smeared and dusty, and he couldn't see inside.

"Mr Lovegood?" he called, wondering what the hell he was even doing here. It was clear that Kingsley had gone into panic mode, otherwise he would have never sent his Head Auror to talk to the editor of _The Quibbler_ in order to stop the flow of negative news.

He knocked one final time after still not hearing any movement from within the house.

Maybe this kind of behaviour was to be expected of Kingsley, he thought. He had never been under fire from all sides as he was now. The usual opinion polls, protests and complaints from the Wizengamot; they paled in comparison to the fact that nearly the entirety of Wizarding Britain had seemingly turned against him now.

When the door still didn't open, Harry considered leaving once again, but he'd walked all the way uphill already. It seemed a shame to leave so soon, so he walked around the cylindrical tower to try and see if Mr. Lovegood was indeed at home. He trampled through the long grass growing next to the ivy-covered walls, and looked in through the windows, but he saw nothing. Behind the house, he found a narrow wooden stairway on that led to a back entrance. He climbed the stairs, and looked in through the door window.

He saw the extremely cluttered living room. Piles of books were stacked up to the ceiling, odd-looking stones, fossils, and machines were placed wherever there was room, and a strange pyramid-shaped machine sporting an enormous lens on the tip stood in the centre of the room, next to the iron-forged spiral staircase. The lens, he noticed, had red splatters on it. After many years as an Auror, he knew the sight of blood better than anyone. Something was horribly wrong.

" _Alohomora,"_ he whispered. The door clicked open, and he stepped inside.

He approached the lens to inspect the smears, but stopped when he heard a strange sound underneath him. He looked down and lifted up his boot. Blood slowly dripped off the sole, back into the puddle he'd stepped in. The more he looked around, the more smears and splatters he saw. And there were bloody handprints leading up the spiral staircase.

He cast a muffling spell on his boots and snuck up the stairs. More bloody handprints. Luna's room looked untouched, so he barely spared it a glance as he ascended to the upper floor.

There, lying crumpled against the round wall, lay Xenophilius Lovegood. It was like a beast had gone to town on his body. His clothes were torn and tousled, revealing a mess of cuts all over his body underneath. Through the wave of nausea that rose within him, Harry was reminded of how he'd found Ollivander, and an overwhelming sense of dread settled into his stomach. He took one last look at the man, noticing the eye socket where his good eye used to be, and then he ran downstairs and out the house.

In his haste to activate his caller and alert the other Aurors, he never even saw the figure standing at the edge of the yard.


	13. Chapter 12

"What do you think?" Harry asked, standing a few yards away from the house in the sunny part of the garden, with his hands in his pockets.

"Same killer, definitely," Proudfoot said, looking more grim than ever. "It's like you said, the torture methods, plus the lack of any footprint or magical trace, it leaves us no other conclusion."

"We're in deep shit, Leslie," Harry said, watching the Aurors, neighbours, and a small army of journalists shuffling around inside and around the house.

"You're sure it's Yaxley?"

"Yes, I'm absolutely sure. He all but admitted to it when me and Kingsley met him."

"I believe you, boss," Proudfoot said, following Harry's gaze. "You've never been wrong with these things. But good luck convincing everyone else."

"Thanks."

Ron approached them. "We're done here," he said. Any trace of amusement or humour, normally every-present with him, was gone. "Do you want one last look, or…?"

"I've seen enough," Harry replied. "Let's go back to the Ministry."

* * *

Every eye in the Auror office was on him when he entered. Harry stopped for a moment to look around the room.

"Back to work, everyone," he said. "We'll pull through this." He couldn't come up with anything more to put them at ease, because he himself was far from it. His heart raced, his stomach ached and his fatigue throbbed inside his skull. He gathered the team that was on this case from the beginning, Ron, Proudfoot, Livermore, Ghezzal, and Johnson, and took them into the privacy of his office.

"You two have picked a hell of a first case," he said to Livermore and Johnson. "Before we start, I – hang on." A flying note fluttered around his head, trying to catch his attention. Waving it away didn't help either, so he grabbed it and read what it said.

" _Harry Potter – my office – now."_

"Kingsley wants to see me. As you can see" – he pointed at the note, which had resumed it's circling around his head as soon as he let it go – "it's urgent. Here are all the notes on the case, I'll be back in a minute."

* * *

"You can go in straight away," the Minister's secretary said, giving him a sympathetic look as he walked by and entered the office.

"Close the door, please," was the first thing Kingsley said to him. Harry did so with trepidation, and sat down across the Minister. He didn't look good, he thought. Stress wrinkles had become a permanent feature in his face, and there was no warmth to be seen anymore in his brown eyes.

"I didn't expect this," Kingsley said simply.

"Me neither," he said.

"Please tell me everything you've found out this morning."

"There was blood everywhere," he began. "It was all over the living room and on the stairs up to Mr. Lovegood's bedroom. Lots of bloody handprints, but they all belonged to Mr. Lovegood himself. We think the killer surprised him in his living room. It's hard to say whether or not there was a fight, 'cause the rooms are a mess as they are. Mr. Lovegood fled upstairs, bleeding profusely. He couldn't Disapparate because there was a strong Anti-Apparation Jinx on him. The killer chased him upstairs, and there he tortured him until he was dead."

Kingsley scribbled a few things down. "And why do you think the killer's the same person who killed Ollivander and Bilfy? How certain are you?"

"The knife wounds look the same size, for starters. The way Ollivander and Mr. Lovegood were tortured are very similar: cuts all over the body, plus some permanent but non-deadly disfiguration. Both their wands were snapped in half as well. And there's not a single trace left behind by whoever did it. We're absolutely sure it's the same killer."

"And you think that killer is Yaxley."

"It has to be," Harry said firmly. "He basically admitted when we spoke with him, remember?"

"But he never truly admitted it. He made the Vow as well, so he dies the moment he sets foot in our country. And he hasn't tried to do so anyway: the tracker is still green, and it's never sounded the alarm," he summed up, placing the small device that emitted a green light between them.

"Maybe the Vow went wrong, then. And he could have found a way to fool the Tracking Charms," Harry said, rubbing his temples to try and massage the headache away.

"He can't."

"I've hidden the Elder Wand from every guard search and every detection charm for the past few months," Harry countered. "Those Tracking Charms are not waterproof. If I can do it, he can as well. And they were a Plan B anyway. We were supposed–"

Kingsley slammed his fist on the desk. "Merlin's saggy ballsack, Harry! Why can't you just admit that you were wrong?!" he burst out. "Forget Yaxley! He's still in Omsk. The Russian Ministry told me so yesterday."

"And do you trust them?" Harry challenged.

"This discussion is over. He's still in Russia, and he made an Unbreakable Vow."

Harry gritted his teeth. He wanted to argue, but it was useless. Kingsley refused to see reason.

"Now, Harry, let's talk about you for a moment."

"Sorry?"

"You still look tired. Are you still not sleeping well?"

"I… No, to be honest," he said, furrowing his brow.

"Still the nightmares?"

"Why are we talking about this, Kingsley? Yes, I still have nightmares. Now can I please go back to my office so I can start working on this murder case?"

Kingsley steepled his hands, and his gaze was unreadable, normally a sign that he was making a difficult decision.

"I don't know if I should," he finally said.

Harry felt his stomach drop, as though he'd skipped a step on the stairs.

"What?" he asked, his voice sounding strangely detached.

Kingsley breathed in deeply. "You've made mistakes. Grave mistakes. You're obsessed about catching the last Death Eater, and because of that, we went after the wrong man, while our killer is still at large."

"That's–"

"Please let me finish," Kinglsey said, calmly holding up his hand. "I'm also troubled by your lack of sleep. I've warned you countless times in the past about how dangerous that problem is for Aurors."

"Honestly, I'm fine!"

"You're not fine. You're massaging your temples a lot. Headache, is it? I've been there, too, Harry."

"I can deal with it," he said. "It's not important anyway. Like you said, our killer is still at large, and we need to catch him. You need me."

"Do you promise to stop focusing on Yaxley, then?" Kingsley asked. "You've made the Vow, Harry. You can't break it. Can you promise me to let him go, and try to look elsewhere instead?"

Harry knew at that point that it was a foregone conclusion. "You know I can't," he said simply.

"Then you leave me no choice," Kingsley sighed. "I'm giving you a temporary leave. Auror Proudfoot will stand in as Head Auror in the meantime. He will lead this investigation while you're recovering from your insomnia."

"Is that what the headlines are gonna say?" Harry asked, feeling his temper rise as Kingsley droned on. "I'm the scapegoat, aren't I?"

"It's only temporary. Try to get some rest. You really need it," Kingsley said. His kind tone only infuriated Harry further, and he stood up. The glass of water on the desk started to shake, as well as the luxurious chandelier hanging above them.

"You're a bloody hypocrite," he said slowly, putting his hands on the desk to stop them from trembling. The betrayal cut deeper than he thought it would, and he had trouble finding words for his anger. "First you send your Head Auror to intimidate the press, and now this. You've completely lost it, man. No wonder Castlereagh is so popular."

"I'm only trying to help you," Kingsley said, slowly slumping in his seat. "I thought you'd understand that this is honestly the last thing I want to do. I'm sorry, friend."

"Good day, Minister," Harry growled. He pushed the chair aside and marched out of the room.

* * *

Ron was worried. Worried for the sudden turn this case has made; worried about Hermione's pregnancy, even though the Healers repeat on every visit to St. Mungo's that it was going perfectly fine; and, most pressingly, worried about what was taking Harry so long. He glanced around the table in Harry's office and saw that his acute concern was shared by the others. Aamir had been shifting in his office chair for the past ten minutes, Vera stared at the door impatiently, and Claire was biting her nails again, even though there wasn't much left of them. Lizzie had valiantly tried to talk about the possibilities of what might've happened to Harry, but conversation never lasted long. Leslie had already gone looking for the errant head of office. But no one was doing anything while the serial killer was still out there.

"This is useless," he declared, standing up. The others looked up in surprise. "I'm going to see what's taking them so long. I'll be back–"

He was interrupted by the door swinging open. Leslie stepped in, his face lined with worry and anger.

"Sit down, Ron," he said. "All of you, listen up. Kingsley's put Harry on non-active."

"What?"

"Why?"

"Has he lost his mind?"

"Settle down, everyone!" Proudfoot called to halt the barrage of questions. "He's put me in charge for now, but we don't have much time. Our biggest priority is catching our killer. Speculating about what the bloody hell is going on with the Minister will have to wait. I want ideas, notes, and a plan of action. Get to it. I'm going to tell the others first."

He left Harry's office, and the remaining Aurors shared disbelieving glances.

"You heard him," Vera then said. "Let's get to it."

It was a chaotic afternoon. They had locked the office and closed the shutters to the corridors so that they wouldn't be disturbed by the reporters and curious Ministry employees trying to find out why the Head Auror, Harry Potter of all people, was temporarily relieved of duty after yet another murder. Meanwhile, they sifted through Harry's notes, shared earlier observations, and discussed the coroner's reports from Ollivander and Bilfy, the House-Elf.

"So," Leslie said once they were finally somewhat organized. "Our prime suspects are Julie le Clé and Gerard Bonham, even though Harry dismissed them. What are our options?"

"Luna Lovegood is still travelling," Ron said. "We still haven't managed to contact her. She might be on a boat."

"What about the other employees at _The Quibbler_?" Lizzie asked. "Shouldn't we talk to them?"

"Xenophilius was self-employed," Leslie said. "There's one guest writer, called Bonpland, but he lives on a farm in rural Paraguay."

"Let's cross him off the list, then," Lizzie concluded.

A moment of silence passed where everyone looked at each other questioningly.

"So what next?" Vera asked.

"How long until that bloody Veritaserum is ready again?" Proudfoot asked.

"It's today, actually," Claire said. "I talked to the Potions Master, and he thinks it'll be ready in a couple more hours."

Ron was getting quite irritated by her constant nail-biting. The first few times he had seen it, he chalked it up to a nervous personality. But he noticed, not for the first time that day, that she seemed to be perpetually distracted and anxious. Something about her chewed fingernails and the red rings around her glassy eyes aroused his suspicion.

"So we can finally start the interrogations, then. That's good."

"Also, we should talk to Le Clé and Bonham again about the Lovegood murder," Aamir said.

"Forgot about that," Leslie mumbled. "Sorry, everyone, I'm not used to this."

"Would've been useful if the Minister hadn't kicked out our Head Auror the very day someone was murdered," Ron commented.

"It is what it is," Lizzie sighed. "You're right, Aamir. So we'll fetch them now?"

"Good idea," Leslie said. "Aamir, shall we do it again?"

"Maybe we should send someone else this time?" Aamir said. "I don't think the jeweller wants to see the two of us again."

"I'll do it," Ron said, still feeling like he was missing something important. "I've been sitting in this chair for too long, anyway." Then an idea struck him. "Claire, d'you want to come along?"

She looked up from her nail-biting in surprise, which only accentuated her worn-out expression. "Sure," she said, hastily stacking up her notes. She stood up, and after a quick farewell, they were out of the office.

They wormed their way past the reporters with forced impassiveness, and Ron breathed a sigh of relief when they were finally above ground again, Apparating to an alley just beside the Leaky Cauldron.

"Are you alright?" he asked Claire as they walked to the well-known pub.

"Hmm? Oh, yes, I am, thanks," she said hastily. Ron didn't know if that was even meant to convince him.

"Are you sure? You look a bit tired lately." They greeted Tom and stepped into the small back alley that housed bins, mice, and the entrance to Diagon Alley.

She shrugged. "This case is weighing on me. And now Auror Potter is sent away, and it all seems to be coming to a head somehow."

"You're not wrong about that," Ron mused, wondering, like he'd done so often lately, if he and Hermione had maybe picked the wrong time to start a family.

"Here we are," he said, stepping inside Julie le Clé's second-hand bookstore. "D'you want me to do the talking?"

But she wasn't next to him anymore, and that was when the door, the windows, and the shutters all slammed shut behind him. It was the only warning he got before a spell raced toward him. He dove out of the way in time and landed behind a sofa just as the spell impacted the wooden wall behind him.

"Miss le Clé?" he called. No response. He glanced over the armrest of the thick leather chair and peered through the now darkened shop. He briefly saw a figure standing in front of the counter before another spell was fired his way, forcing him to take cover again.

The initial shock passed, and he forced himself to breathe more evenly. _You're an Auror!_ he yelled to himself. So he fished the small caller device out of his robes to try and warn the others.

" _Accio caller!"_ he heard a voice cry behind him, and he could only watch helplessly as it zoomed out of his grasp.

"I just want to talk," he called. "There's no need to make rash decisions now."

The sofa rocked back and forth dangerously when a Reductor Curse impacted the sofa. Apparently there _was_ such a need.

He shifted his position and peered past the chair. Careful not to alert the shadowy figure, he aimed his wand and cast a Petrification Curse, only to watch it uselessly impact a Shield Charm.

He was rapidly running out of options, and hiding behind a sofa didn't inspire much faith in him. Figuring that running away was probably his best option, he fired a Bombardment Curse at the wooden wall, but instead of splintering the glass and ornamental wood, the red beam of his spell was absorbed by a ward.

He was trapped, he realized. Fully trapped. His breath quickened, and he jumped when yet another spell rattled the broad sofa. The strong smell of singing wood and leather entered his nose. The sofa wasn't going to hold for too long, so he glanced around to try and find something else he could hide behind.

Another couch, just about fifteen feet to his right, looked sturdy enough. Ron took a deep breath, choking back a cough when he breathed in the penetrant air of burned leather. Then he blindly fired a Blasting Curse over the armrest and dove towards the couch.

But he landed awkwardly on his shoulder, and a spell immediately slammed into his ankle. He howled in pain, and quickly scrambled the last few feet towards cover.

 _Should've practiced dodging more_ , he chastised himself, wincing as he tried to move his ankle. Through his robes and boots, he saw his foot sticking out at an odd angle.

He gasped, and desperately tried to keep his panicked breathing under control. Another spell whistled through the air, impacting the couch and breaking its wooden frame. Manic thoughts floated by, but he couldn't come up with any ideas on how to escape.

" _Accio couch!"_

Once the realization set in, it was already too late, and the heavy leather couch was quickly dragged away from him, its legs squeaking as they rushed over the wooden floorboards. Instinctively, Ron threw up a Shield Charm which stopped the first barrage of spells. In the flickering light of the spellfire, he could finally see the face of his opponent: it was Julie le Clé, her short hair billowing in the force of their duel, her brown eyes reflecting the coloured lights that illuminated the dark shop.

A deep-purple spell broke through his shield, and he barely managed to roll out of its trajectory.

" _Expelliarmus!"_ he cried. She parried it with ease, but he managed to use that split-second to cast another Shield Charm.

But he knew, they both knew, that he would not be able to keep this up. He felt weary, his ankle throbbed and stung, and Julie was far more adept at duelling than he had ever imagined. Her eyes showed no mercy.

An image of Hermione flicked through his head. His breath hitched in his throat and his chest constricted when he realized he would never meet their unborn child. His shield dimmed and flickered, and he knew it was about to go out, like the flame of a candle in the wind…

That was when he heard a thundering sound behind him, followed by the sound of splintering glass, and blinding rays of light flooded the darkened shop.

" _Incarcerous!"_ cried a voice. Ropes were flung towards Julie, wrapping themselves tightly around her. A Stunning Spell quickly followed, and finally she collapsed in front of the counter. Her wand fell to the floor as the last of the glass and wood rained down all around the shop. Ron closed his eyes, and breathed out shakily. He was saved.

He opened his eyes to see who his saviour was. It was Claire Johnson, standing in front of a hole in the wall, wand still pointing at Julie as sunlight shone into the room around her.

"Perfect timing," he laughed nervously. His laugh turned into a grimace when he was once again made aware of his broken ankle. He sat up straighter, careful not to move his foot.

"You saved my arse, thank you," he said, sticking out his hand so that she could pull him to his feet. "Thought I was toast there. Where did you go, anyway? You disappeared just before…"

He trailed off when she didn't take his hand. In fact, her posture hadn't changed at all ever since her heroic entry. She regarded him stoically, her eyes looking strangely glazed over, and void of emotions he'd usually expect to see after saving a colleague from certain death.

"Claire?" Ron asked hesitantly. "Is everything alright?"

She didn't reply. Instead, she slowly turned to him, shakily, hesitantly, as if she was struggling with something. Then she raised her arm, and aimed her wand straight at him.

* * *

"Thanks for the tea, Hagrid," Harry said, setting down the massive wooden cup back down on the equally massive table. "But I really need to leave now."

"T'was my pleasure, Harry," Hagrid said. "Been righ' lovely havin' yeh stop by. Yeh'll do tha' more of'en now, won' yeh?"

"Definitely," Harry said. He couldn't possibly tell the man how much his kindness meant to him at this moment.

"Oh, bu' go on, then. Yeh'll need ter see yer godson now. He'll love i', I'll tell yeh tha'. He hasn' been himself ever since he go' here af'er the holidays."

"I'm not his real parent, but I hope I can help him," Harry said, pulling on his coat again.

"I reckon' yeh will. Yer as good as his dad, Harry. An' there ain' nothin' be'er than knowin' yeh've go' people who love yeh. All he needs is a good remin'er tha' he does."

"I'll do my best. See you later, Hagrid."

Harry smiled until the door closed behind him. Having tea with Hagrid was merely supposed to be an excuse to enter the Hogwarts grounds, but he'd forgotten how much he enjoyed those small conversations with his old friend. Just for a moment, he could forget about everything else while they drank from their buckets and talked about Hogwarts, classes, and Teddy. But now that he was outside again, that warm, toasty feeling of friendship slipped away in the chilly winds of mid-September.

He ducked behind a thick tree and quickly pulled the Invisibility cloak over himself. Then he turned around and walked back the way he came, but this time past Hagrid's hut, and towards the dark edge of the Forbidden Forest. Worry and excitement vied for attention, but in the end, the prospect of finally being able to retrace his route to the Resurrection Stone won out. He walked briskly past the edge of the woods.

Harry wasn't proud of lying to Hagrid about bringing a surprise visit to his godson, but it was necessary. Still, he thought, it wouldn't hurt to stop by Hogwarts after he was done in the Forest. Hagrid was right, as always. People need to be assured that they have people who love them. He himself could have done with such a reminder right now.

As he walked beneath the dense canopy, past enormous trees and monstrous root structures, flashes of what had happened that day came back to him. Seeing Mr. Lovegood's mutilated body. The hasty discussions with Proudfoot and Ron. Then that meeting with Kingsley…

The dull ache he'd passively felt ever since he walked out of the Minister's office now swelled inside him. His breath halted and he felt tears form in his eyes as his trusted friend's betrayal replayed in his mind.

"Why?" he asked out loud, with trembling voice. He felt ill at ease, giving voice to his turmoil, but it felt strangely comforting to finally be able to say his thoughts out loud after months of silence and secrecy.

"You're a bloody hypocrite," he mumbled to himself. "You lie to your girlfriend for months, but still you're furious when your friend betrays you. How d'you think she would feel?"

His grumbling continued as he instinctively followed the path deeper into the woods. Birdsong gradually died out, as did the other sounds of the forest he hadn't noticed until they were gone. The hairs on his arms stood up as the air around him became quieter and quieter, as if the whole forest itself were waiting for something.

Then, finally, he reached that fateful clearing. His mind flashed back to that moment some thirteen years ago, when he had died here. He still remembered the feeling of being pulled from his body as Voldemort's Killing Curse impacted him, though it felt less vivid now.

He shook his head and strode to the centre of the clearing, just as he had done back then. Only then, he'd had his parents, Sirius, and Remus at his side. Now, there was nobody. The forest around him dimmed, and he struggled to see around him. Somehow, he knew exactly where he needed to be. Once he got there, he kneeled down and rolled up his sleeves. Moss, mouldy leaves, small branches, and the perpetually wet dirt and humus below it had become the Stone's grave, and he calmly dug through it.

His nails hit something hard. He pinched it between his fingers and pulled it out of the forest floor. Almost reverently, he laid the stone in his hand and brushed the dirt and worms from it. The stone was impossibly black and flawlessly smooth, with neat, straight edges. There, kneeling on the cold, wet forest floor, Harry Potter came to the thrilling realisation: he finally possessed all three Deathly Hallows.

Yet nothing remarkable happened.

He regarded the Resurrection Stone closely, wondering what to do next. His first thought was to talk to his parents, but then he realized he didn't really feel that burning desire anymore. He had made peace with it after the War. And even though he regularly visited his parents' graves, he didn't feel much excitement at the possibility of talking to them, not in the way he had always thought he would.

He did, however, realize that there was someone else who dearly missed his own parents. Tenderly, he laid the stone back down in its little hole, and again covered it in dirt. He then stood up and began walking back to Hogwarts.


	14. Chapter 13

This is the last chapter of the story, sadly :(. Part 3, the final part of this series, is being written at the moment. I'm steaming ahead as we speak, so keep an eye out for that!

Thank you very much to everyone who's read it, and to the people who have left all these amazing reviews. I loved them. Last thank you as well to the two head-betas: Lawyer and Moon_Potato, without whom this story would have been chock-full of spelling and continuity issues. I will see you all in the next story.

* * *

Ron stared at the end of Claire's wand, and in that fateful moment, through the fear and tension, it all became clear to him. He should have known. Her nail-biting, her increasingly worn-out appearance, her evasiveness about her personal life. And her glassy eyes.

"You don't have to do this, Claire," he said shakily, slowly reaching for his wand while maintaining eye contact.

" _Expelliarmus_ ," she said shakily. His wand flew away before he could even touch it.

"Please listen to me," he said, holding up his hands in surrender.

"I don't want to," she whispered, tossing her head from side to side, as if trying to shake something off.

"Claire–"

"SHUT UP!" she screamed, aiming at him with renewed determination. "I have to do this."

"I'm sorry," he said, bowing his head further, determined to keep her talking. "Why, though? Why do you have to do this?"

"I…" she began.

Ron looked up at her hesitation. Her eyes shone with tears, and her mouth was open, yet no words came out.

"H-he's in my head. Telling m-me to do this."

 _The Imperius Curse_ , Ron thought.

"You can fight this, Claire," he said. "You're stronger than that voice. Don't give in to it."

"He's too strong," she whimpered, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. "I can't fight it."

"Yes, you can," he encouraged. The grip on her wand weakened. "C'mon, even I managed it eventually. I know you can do this."

"I'm so tired," she whispered. "I can't do this anymore."

"I know, Claire, but you've got to pull through this. You're nearly there, just hang on!"

" _Incarcerous!"_ she cried, and Ron felt his stomach turn to ice as ropes wrapped themselves around him. The impact of the spell knocked him on his back.

"Please," he breathed, straining his neck to meet her eyes as beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

But she slowly strode towards him, and her wand was pointed at his throat. She stopped inches away from him and looked down at him with tearful eyes.

But when she opened her mouth, nothing came out.

"I… I won't," she then said softly.

Ron stared at her, and held his breath as he waited for what would happen next.

"No, I won't…" she said again, this time louder. "I won't! I WON'T!"

And with that, she tossed her wand aside. For a moment it looked like she would collapse on the spot, but then she moved to the counter and leaned against it, breathing in and out tiredly.

Ron let out the breath he'd been holding in and laid his head down on the wooden floor.

"He's gone," Claire sighed. "It's over."

She took one last deep breath, and then pushed herself upright again.

"Let's get you untied," she said. She picked up her wand from where it had landed and pointed it at him again.

"Hang on," Ron said, trying to move his head so he could look at her as she approached. "Before you do that, are you sure he's gone?"

She carefully sliced the ropes open before he could ask for more confirmation.

"Thanks," he said shakily.

"How bad is your ankle?" she asked, helping him sit up and kneeling next to him.

"It's broken, I think," Ron heaved. "I can't move it."

" _Episkey,_ " she called. Blue light shot from her wand, and Ron felt his ankle move itself in place again.

"Thanks," he said again, accepting her hand and pulling himself up. "And thanks for saving me. I really thought I was done for."

"I wouldn't have ever forgiven myself if that had happened," she said grimly as they dusted the wood and glass off their robes. "But there's no time to lose, Ron. Yaxley's still out there."

"Yaxley?" Ron asked. He found his wand on the ground in the corner of the shop. "But-"

"He never even left the country. He's had Julie and me under the Imperius Curse..." She pressed her lips together. "He forced me to spy on Harry and the Aurors for the past few months," she said as Ron slowly steered them to the couch that now stood in the middle of the room. "First he had me get rid of Henry, my boyfriend, I think to isolate me."

"So, you cheating on him…" They sat down.

"I never even realized what had happened until I was packing my stuff to move out of our apartment," she said in a tight voice. "After that, Yaxley regularly visited me, always to recast the Imperius Curse, always telling me to spy on Harry. That's how he knew Harry had found the Wand of Death."

"Bloody hell." Then the last few words sunk in. "Wait, what?"

"You didn't know?" she asked, her brows furrowing. "He was secretive about it, but I supposed he'd at least have told you about it."

"No, he never told me about that," he said, not quite sure how to feel at that moment after yet another twist in what in the first place was supposed to be a simple interview. "How long has he had it?"

"I don't know. I found out one day when he took it out of his holster in the loo."

"You were spying on him in the loo?"

She gave him a tired look.

"Right, not like you had much say in the matter."

"Not really," she said dryly.

They paused.

"D'you want to take a rest?"

"I'll rest when we caught that bastard," she said softly.

"And we will, but you look knackered. Maybe you should-"

"I'll get through it, so let's just call the others," she interrupted him.

"If you say so," Ron said. "Alright then. Julie took my caller, though, so could you send the signal?"

"Sure. I guess Yaxley must've told her about them." She took her caller out of her pocket and held her wand to it, sending a signal to the other Aurors.

They waited mostly in silence. Ron figured she could use some quiet time to process what had happened to her.

"I'll be fired on the spot, won't I?" she finally asked.

"Don't worry about it," Ron said, putting an arm around her shoulder. "Harry's not there to make that decision. And I think that you saving my life will definitely look good on your report."

"I hope so," she sighed. "D'you think we should cancel the wards for when the others to arrive?"

"Probably," he said, glancing at the muddled figures of curious bystanders just outside the magical barrier surrounding the shop. "How'd you get through them, anyway?"

"I did a course on wards at Hogwarts," she said. Ron noticed she had been looking at everything in the shop except him.

"You chose your subjects well," he commented.

"I just wished I could've taken a course on the Imperius Curse," she mumbled.

"We had one," Ron said. "It's a long story... Hermione had to braid her own hair, and I had to hop around the classroom four times. And that wasn't even the most mortifying thing. Neville - you know Neville? He had to..."

* * *

It was well after dinnertime when Ron and the others were done with Julie's and Claire's statements, as well as their initial (though completely useless) searches for Yaxley. Julie had had more trouble breaking through the Imperius Curse than Claire, and she had still needed to be restrained during the interrogation, as they weren't sure whether or not she still had any murderous intentions towards the Aurors. Claire, though, seemed to be holding up well for someone who had been under the Imperius Curse for the past five months. Unfortunately, neither she nor Julie knew where Yaxley was, and as a safety precaution, both would spend the night in private chambers within the Ministry.

After the debriefings, Ron, Leslie, and the other Aurors conceded that there was nothing more they could do for the day. They hadn't heard anything of Harry yet, so they agreed to give him some time at home to sort things out. The Minister hadn't shown up either to explain why he had sent their boss away. On top of that, everyone was famished.

Tired, hungry, and still shaken from the day's events, Ron Flooed back home.

"Oh, look what the fireplace spit out," Hermione said. She turned around in her chair at the small dinner table and she and Ron shared a smile. To his surprise, he saw Ginny peek at him from behind his fiancée.

"Hey, Ron," she said. "Long day?"

"I dunno if I'm more hungry or tired," he sighed, walking up to them and kissing Hermione on the cheek. "Hey, love."

"Hey," she said, stroking his cheek. "You're late."

"Don't I know it. How's the baby?"

"Actually quiet today, if you can believe it. There's some pasta left in the pan. Ginny thought it was alright."

Ginny's carefully schooled expression told Ron something entirely different.

After getting a plate of pasta, he finally dropped down next to the girls, heaving a big sigh as he was finally able to relax.

"What are _you_ doing here?" he asked Ginny, noticing the half-empty glass of wine in front of her.

Hermione slapped his arm. "Manners, Ron."

"I stopped expecting anything better from him," Ginny said. Her smile dimmed, and she showed him the paper that lay in front of her.

" _Head Auror Harry Potter Dismissed by Minister Shacklebolt,"_ he read out loud. "Yeah, we had quite the day. Did he come home?"

"No!" she said. "That's why I came here, to see if either of you had heard anything."

"I haven't seen him either," Hermione said, concern shining in her eyes. "We tried sending him a Patronus, but we've heard nothing."

"Yeah, we've missed him as well," Ron said. "Proudfoot told us Kingsley looked positively haunted, though. They must've had a big spat."

"What's actually going on?" Ginny asked, taking another considerate sip of her wine. "Harry has been hiding stuff from me, and I know for sure it has something to do with that big murder case you've been dealing with lately."

"I realized today I only know half of it," Ron confessed. "Hang on, let me eat first, then I'll tell you all about it."

"And then we'll look for Harry," Ginny said. "Cause you don't know where he is either, and I'm starting to think something's really wrong."

"Of course, but I really need to eat."

He shovelled the slightly overcooked pasta in his mouth. It was a testament to how worried Hermione was that she didn't complain about his table manners.

"Alright," he said, pushing the plate away from him. "I guess I'll start at the beginning. I only saw Harry briefly this morning. He looked like shit, though. Did he have a long night?" he asked, looking at Ginny.

"If you count spending an hour and a half in the loo as a long night," she said uneasily.

"You two have a strange life together. Anyway, some time later he went to Lovegood's house for some reason. Kingsley ordered him to, he said. That's when he found Lovegood's body. You've read about that as well, I'm guessing."

"Yeah," Hermione said softly. "Did you see Luna?"

"No, she's still on her trip. We'll try to contact her tomorrow. It was bad, though," he said, rubbing his eyes. "And it was almost identical to how we found Ollivander. It was the same killer."

" _The Prophet_ said you got the wrong guy in Yaxley."

"The press is wrong," he said darkly.

The mood worsened as he continued his story. As he was describing the fight with Julie and Claire, Hermione threw increasingly foul looks at him.

"What?" he asked her.

"You should've been more careful, you idiot! You could have been killed, and then what would I have done?" For good measure, she smacked his arm again.

"Ouch! You might just do me in anyway if you keep that up!"

Hermione still glared at him.

"Alright, I'm sorry. I'll be more careful next time, I promise."

"You'd better," she said, but the sting had left her voice.

Ginny coughed. "We should start searching for Harry now."

"We should," Ron said. "But where and how?"

"We don't know. We tried the cafes near the Ministry and that pub you always go to on Friday nights," Ginny summed up.

"The Winking Cyclops?"

"Yeah, that one. No sign of him."

"Oh," Ron said. "Maybe he's gone flying somewhere?"

"His Firebolt is still at home," Ginny said. "His Invisibility cloak is missing, though."

"Shit," Ron said. "Any other day I'd have let him stew for a while, but Yaxley's out there."

"Exactly."

"How about we try–" Hermione began, but then the fireplace burst to life, and Minerva McGonagall's head appeared in the hearth with a soft _pop_.

"Professor McGonagall!" Hermione said. "What brings you here?"

"Oh, good, you're all here. I tried Grimmauld Place first, but you weren't there, Miss Weasley."

"Harry's missing," she said worriedly.

"Oh, I've found him, alright," McGonagall said. "That's precisely why I Flooed you. I was hoping you'd know why he approached Teddy Lupin after supper and took him into the Forbidden Forest."

* * *

"I contacted you as fast as I could," McGonagall said as she, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny exited the Headmistress' office. "Word spreads fast in this castle, but not fast enough in this case. They were already gone by the time Firminus Nigellus's portrait told me."

"Something's horribly wrong, definitely," Ginny said, looking more distressed by the minute. "Harry hasn't been himself lately, but I don't know why."

"I might have an answer to that," Ron said as they marched through the abandoned corridors, desperately trying to keep up with McGonagall's brisk pace. "Harry apparently has the Elder Wand."

"What?" Ginny shouted while Hermione gasped.

"Yeah, that was just about my reaction as well."

"How do you know it, then?" Hermione demanded. "How long have you known?"

"I only heard it just now, calm down. Claire Johnson–she was Imperiused by Yaxley, and was forced to spy on Harry for months–" he added at McGonagall's questioning look.

"I'll save my questions for later," she said uneasily.

"Anyway, she discovered it that way. But she doesn't know how or when Harry found it."

"When I get my hands on him..." Ginny growled.

"Shouldn't we alert the Aurors?" Hermione asked. They had reached the front gate of the castle by now. The sun had nearly reached the horizon, and it was quickly becoming cold and dark.

"I don't want to make too much of a fuss," Ginny said.

"Too late for that," Ron commented.

"Yeah, but if this is about the Elder Wand, like you said, then I don't want anyone else to know about this," she said. She hesitated. "We all know how many people were murdered for that thing."

"You're right," Hermione said. "Hang on, is that Hagrid?" She pointed toward the large figure approaching them from the distance.

"Looks like it," Ron said, squinting his eyes. "Bloke's three times bigger than anyone. Hard to miss. Hey, Hagrid!"

"Yeh've seen Harry an' Teddy as well, then?" he asked as he reached them, his worried face illuminated by the lantern held high in his hand.

"We have indeed, Hagrid," McGonagall said. "Come with us, please. We're going after them."

They filled Hagrid in on what they knew as they entered the forest, leaving the last rays of sunlight behind them.

"Gallopin' gorgons, wha' a mess this is," Hagrid said, shaking his head. "Careful now, Hermione, watch tha' root. I'll tell yeh what, I do miss Fang. He would've led us righ' to 'em."

"How exactly are we going to find them, anyway?" Ginny asked.

"We're going ter be following their tracks a' the momen'. Look," he said, pointing at a pair of footprints in front of them. "It's quite muddy, so you can see fresh prints easily."

Then he stopped abruptly.

"Ginny, wait!" Ron called at his sister, who'd marched ahead quite a bit already. "What is it, Hagrid?"

"We migh' no' be the only ones lookin' fer 'em," Hagrid said, pointing at another set of fresh footprints.

* * *

"Why won't you tell me where we're going?" Teddy asked uncertainly. "Harry, we shouldn't be here."

"I want it to be a surprise," Harry said. "It'll be worth it, really."

A part of him deep inside knew that what he was doing was wrong. But his body wasn't under his own control anymore. His nightmare had finally become reality.

"It's getting even darker," Teddy said with trembling voice, squeezing Harry's hand tightly.

"We're nearly there," he said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone.

A twig snapped behind them, and they both swivelled on the spot.

"You heard that too?" Teddy asked.

"Yeah," Harry said slowly. "I don't see anything, though. C'mon, let's keep moving."

"I don't think this is a good idea," Teddy repeated.

Harry had lost count how many times he'd said that while they moved deeper and deeper into the ancient forest.

"Trust me," he said, trying to smile reassuringly at his godson.

"Harry, please," Teddy whispered, tugging on his hand. "It's pitch-black here. Please, let's go back."

"Look, see that clearing over there? That's where we need to go."

"I don't see a clearing," Teddy said, looking positively terrified now. "This place doesn't feel right at all."

"You don't?" Harry asked. "Look, right there, a few yards off."

"Please, let go of me!" Teddy begged, trying to pry his hand loose.

"Teddy, do not walk away from me," Harry warned.

" _Compungo!"_ Teddy called. The white light of the Stinging Jinx shot from his wand and hit Harry's hand. He hissed in pain, and Teddy yanked his hand free.

"Stay here!" Harry shouted, but Teddy had already dashed away. He watched in dismay as his godson sprinted away into the darkness.

Leaves rustled behind him, and he spun around.

There, standing tall between two fir trees, stood Yaxley, his manic eyes glittering in the faint starlight.

"Stay away from me," Harry said, his voice hoarse.

"You can't escape from me, Potter," he hissed.

But Harry didn't consider fighting him. Not yet. His godson was in danger, and he had finally managed to tear his mind from the Resurrection Stone that lay buried in the clearing ahead. The magnetic pull towards the Stone was strong, as was his hatred for the man standing in front of him, but fear for what could happen to his godson was stronger. He threw a Stunning Spell at Yaxley to throw him off for a few seconds, and immediately turned and set off in the direction that Teddy had fled.

* * *

Some considerable distance behind Harry and Teddy, Ron and the others moved deeper into the woods, quietly discussing who could be the person chasing after Harry and Teddy. Their conclusion, Yaxley, was as inevitable as it was grim.

"Is it just me, or have the lights gone out suddenly?" Ron asked the others. "I can barely see five yards ahead!" He didn't want to show the others how worried he was for his best mate. There was already enough fear to go around, and he was supposed to be the Auror here.

"I haven' heard any birds fer a while now," Hagrid said. "Excep' fer tha' pair of ravens followin' us."

"This feels wrong," McGonagall said, who despite her age seemed to have no trouble navigating through the treacherous woods. "Be on your guard; there is Dark Magic here."

"The tracks stop here," Ginny called with trembling voice. They caught up with her and eyed the spot on the ground where she was pointing her wand.

Hermione gasped. "You don't think…"

"It looks like they struggled," McGonagall said.

"Oh God, Harry," Ginny whispered quietly.

"Yeah, and look here. One of them ran away," Ron said, kneeling down. "Those are Teddy's shoeprints, right? They look the same as the others we saw earlier."

Hagrid grunted as he kneeled next to Ron, and he held the gigantic lantern close to the dirt. Then he slowly moved it away from the footprint to make the shadows of the nuances more distinguishable. "Oh, yes, tha's him alrigh', an' he looked in a righ' hurry as well," he concluded. Then he pointed at another footprint. "An' i' looks like Harry wen' tha' way as well, look."

"So they scuffled, and then Teddy ran away, but not back the way he came," Hermione summed up.

"And Harry went after him," McGonagall added. Her usual stiff façade was slowly coming undone as the knot in her hair came loose and worry shone in her eyes. "He looked worse every time we talked, but this..."

"It'll be alright. We'll find them," Ron said, even though he himself was starting to lose hope as well.

"Any sign of Yaxley?" Ginny asked, loitering restlessly at the edge of the group, near a pair of enormous hollies.

"I haven' seen any, here," Hagrid said. "Bu' tha' doesn' mean he ain' around anymore. Be bes' if we find 'em as soon as possible."

"What if Harry and Teddy split up, though?" Hermione asked.

"We'll deal with that when we get to it. C'mon," Ron said firmly, following Ginny, who had already set off.

* * *

Teddy dashed as quickly as he could through never-ending trees, past thick bushes and over strangely-shaped roots. He no longer heard anyone behind him, but he still kept running, faster and further than he had ever run before.

 _I'm running away from Harry_ , he thought bewilderedly. This wasn't supposed to be happening. This all felt like he'd suddenly landed in a nightmare.

A part of him wanted to stop and wait for his godfather, and Teddy didn't doubt he was chasing after him. But another part of him vividly recalled how gaunt he'd looked - and his eyes… He had hardly recognised his godfather. Something was horribly wrong with him. So he kept running, looking over his shoulder every so often when he felt something itch between his shoulders.

* * *

As Harry ran after Teddy, the soil under his feet turned rockier and more uneven. They were getting closer to the mountains.

Vivid images stormed through his head; Teddy getting trapped in an invisible murky pond, or falling prey to Acromantulas and Death Eaters. And from time to time he saw a flash of a dark figure just beyond the trees. He knew now that it had been Yaxley all along, Kingsley's stubbornness be damned. He would never allow the Death Eater, and whatever else lurked among the shadows here, to harm his godson. The mere thought brought a red haze before his eyes.

 _Yet the only thing he's running away from is me_ , he thought. Shame rose up in him and constricted his throat. Now that he had broken through that strange obsessive trance, he finally felt the gravity of the mistakes he had made. He hoped, prayed, that it would not become even worse.

* * *

All the trees looked the same, Teddy thought as he desperately looked around for anything recognisable. But there was nothing. He was beginning to realize just how stupid it had been to run this way, instead of returning the way they had come. He was completely and utterly lost in the Forbidden Forest, the one place that Harry, Andy, Professor McGonagall and everyone else had warned him to never enter. And now he was here, right in the middle of it.

His tired legs protested too much, and his heart beat in his throat. He needed to rest. He descended down a rocky slope and reached a small clearing. There, he skidded to a stop and leaned against the tree next to him at the edge of the fern-filled glade, panting heavily.

But something moved, just beyond the other side of the clearing. He grabbed his wand from the pocket of his wet and filthy jeans. His shoulders tensed, and he slowly stepped away from the tree, wand raised at where he thought he saw a shadowy figure slowly move around.

* * *

"I can't see their footprints anymore!" Ginny called to the others.

"Blast. I though' tha' migh' happen," Hagrid muttered as they briskly caught up to where Ginny was waiting for them. "The soil here is too rocky now tha' we're nearin' the mountains."

"Damn," Ron swore. "Alright, let's spread out some more."

"Are you sure?" Hermione asked.

"He's the Auror," Ginny said. "And I think we should spread out as well. This forest is way too big, we're never going to find them at this rate."

"Oh, alright," Hermione conceded.

"Hermione, you're with me," Ron said immediately. "Ginny, you as well."

"Hagrid and I will stick more to the…" McGonagall trailed off, and glanced at Hagrid.

"Eas'," he supplied.

"Send a Patronus as soon as you find anything," Ron said as they set off again.

"Please be careful," Hermione said. But the two Professors had already disappeared into the woods.

* * *

Time slowed to a crawl as Teddy stood perfectly still, his wand aimed at where he last saw movement. He held his breath and listened intently as he peered through the darkness. Wind rushed through the trees. He thought he heard something rustle to his left, but when he whipped his head around to look, he saw nothing. Then a pebble rolled down the hill behind him, but no one was there either.

"Harry?" he called. He hated how much his voice cracked. He sounded like he was terrified.

But whatever was out there, it didn't respond to his call. This wasn't Harry, he realized. Despite what he'd done, Teddy knew he wouldn't stalk around him like this. Someone else was hunting him.

"Show yourself!" he called to whoever was out there. "C'mon, I'm not afraid of you!"

The wind stopped and the trees stilled, as if they collectively held their breath.

Teddy swallowed, and looked around the glade one more time.

Then something came thundering down the hill behind him, and he screamed.

* * *

Harry had almost stopped running when he suddenly heard Teddy's terrified shout just further ahead. He jumped over a fallen tree trunk and sprinted down the hill towards a small clearing. There, in the middle of the glade, stood Teddy, wand raised in defiance. He raced the last few yards towards him as Teddy turned around to him and screamed. Harry didn't stop, though, and he threw him in his arms around him.

"Harry!" Teddy called.

"I've got you, son, I've got you," Harry whispered, gripping him tightly and kissing his temple. "I'm so, so sorry."

"Harry," he croaked. "Harry, you're squishing me!"

Harry squeezed him one last time, then he held him at arm's length.

"Are you hurt?" he asked worriedly.

"No. But... Harry, there's someone out there."

"It's Yaxley, the Death Eater. You heard him too?"

Teddy nodded, still looking at him with apprehension.

"Alright, stay where you are. I won't let anyone touch you. _Homenum Revelio!_ "

The spell revealed nothing, but that reassured him not one bit.

"That's not your normal wand," Teddy said.

"It's… I'll explain everything later. Just keep your wand ready," he told his godson. "And don't hesitate."

* * *

Hermione stopped, and so did Ron. He gestured to Ginny, walking far to the right of them, to do the same.

"Did you hear that?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah. Was that Teddy?"

"He sounded like he was in trouble, come on!"

"Hermione, wait!" Ron called, but she had already ran ahead, with Ginny hot on her heels.

* * *

Harry looked up, startled, when he heard something rustle far above them. He stared at the canopy, but it was too dark to see anything. Then he saw on one of the lower branches a beak and black feathers, shining in the starlight.

He sighed. "Just a raven," he told Teddy.

"Can we head back now? We've been out here forever. Maybe I just saw a wild animal."

"I haven't seen him in a while now, either. Alright, let's–"

He heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps behind him, and instantly he turned around and fired a spell.

As always, his aim was true. The person stiffened, but then he realised that it looked nothing like Yaxley. In the pale light he saw bushy hair, and a face he recognised immediately…

Hermione sunk to her knees, gasping and clutching her belly, where a dark red stain was quickly forming on her white shirt.

Two more figures came down the hill. He saw Ron, then Ginny, both arrive and then freeze at the sight in front of them.

He felt detached. He could no longer feel the ground under his feet, nor the presence of his godson next to him. He didn't feel the Elder Wand held loosely in his paralyzed grip. And when he met Ginny's brown eyes and saw his shock reflected there, he felt a great distance between them, far greater than the small glade they stood in.

Ron dove onto his knees next to his wife and turned her on her back, his hand pressing on the wound on her stomach. He shouted something, Ginny said something, as did Teddy, but their words didn't register with Harry. The weight of what had happened smashed into him like a solid iron weight as he watched Hermione shake and spasm on the cold forest floor.

Ron's head whipped up to look at him, and Harry stepped back in shock as he saw his friends' anger there. Anger that was aimed at _him_. He wanted to scream, he wanted to say something to them, that he didn't mean to, that he thought it was Yaxley, that he wanted to protect his godson. But his throat had closed.

Only when he met Ginny's eyes was he finally able to break out of his shock. He couldn't bear to see her look at him like that, like she didn't know him. That distance he felt only got stronger the longer he stood there in the middle of the glade, and he took another step back. Something had gone up between him and everything around him, and as he realized that, grief crashed over him. There was only one thing he could do now, and he gave into it. He turned around, and ran.

With every tree, root, and rock that he passed, and with every step he took, further downhill, away from where he came, into a yet undiscovered valley, he felt more terribly assured of his direction away from everyone he would leave behind. Ron, Hermione, Teddy and Ginny. Now that he could never see them again, he knew already how sharp the ache would be. Everything else racing through his head paled in comparison. Even the mystery of Yaxley and how he had managed to circumvent the Vow they had taken, it didn't faze him now. All the unanswered questions he'd come so close to answering, he didn't care about them anymore. He left all that behind as he ran deeper down, into the arms of the dark forest.


End file.
